Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF)

The story

Back in 1965, physicist Ray Davis built a 100,000-gallon tank of cleaning fluid on the mine's 4,850-foot level to catch solar neutrinos — the first experiment ever to detect them, work that won a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize. After mining stopped in 2001, philanthropist T. Denny Sanford donated $70 million in 2006 to convert the flooded mine into a permanent lab. On that same 4,850-foot level, the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment became the world's most sensitive dark-matter detector (2022), and the international DUNE neutrino experiment is now under construction there, aimed at a beam fired 800 miles from Fermilab in Illinois.

Everything that was here

• 2006–present · still open

  Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF)Research Facility

  The world's most productive gold mine became the deepest underground physics lab in the U.S., where scientists hunt for dark matter nearly a mile beneath the Black Hills.

  See the map in 2007 →
• 1876–2001

  Homestake Gold MineMine

  The richest gold mine in the Western Hemisphere ran for 126 years and swallowed its own discovery site into a half-mile-wide, 1,200-foot-deep pit — the Open Cut — right in the middle of town.

  See the map in 1877 →

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