Homestake Mine (South Dakota)

The mine produced more than forty million troy ounces (43,900,000 oz; 1,240,000 kg) of gold during its lifetime.

The Homestake Mine is famous in scientific circles because of the work of a deep underground laboratory that was established there in the mid-1960s.

"[3] In 1876, settlers Fred and Moses Manuel, Alex Engh, and Hank Harney discovered the Homestake deposit during the Black Hills Gold Rush.

The Black Hills had been guaranteed to the Lakota Nation by the Fort Laramie Treaty, but the land was stolen for its gold.

Hearst arranged to haul the mining equipment by wagon from the nearest railhead in Sidney, Nebraska.

In 1879 the partners sold shares in the Homestake Mining Company, and listed it on the New York Stock Exchange.

A Hearst employee killed a man who refused to sell his claim, but was acquitted in court after all the witnesses disappeared.

Hearst realized that he might be on the receiving end of violence, and wrote a letter to his partners asking them to provide for his family should he be murdered.

2, Crown Point, Sunrise, and General Ellison to the original two claims of the Manuel Brothers, Golden Terra and Old Abe, totaling 30 acres (12 ha).

Reasons included low gold prices, poor ore quality, and high costs.

[13] The mine is the site for research into enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) with deep access to dense and stable rock.

Pressurized water injected inside boreholes fractures the rock, enhancing its permeability to improve thermal energy extraction.

[14] The Department of Energy (DOE) began funding basic science with Kismet in 2014,[15] followed by EGS Collab in 2016[16] and by the Center for Understanding Subsurface Signals and Permeability (CUSSP) in 2023.