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BTW the Soudan Mine is underground, not an open pit mine. The tour takes you 2341 feet underground in an elevator that appears to be held by a single cable and is driven by a machine built in 1925. (The cable is fairly new.) There are two tours for the public, one that describes iron mining and one that visits the physics experiments. Sometimes there are former miners hanging around who are interesting to talk to. The development of large open-pit taconite mines destroyed the cost-effectiveness of Soudan despite the fact that it's ore contains around 4 times the density of iron compared with taconite. Some physicists are now lobbying to greatly deepen the mine.