Entrance to Lead (pronounced as leed). Founded in 1876 as a company town by the Homestake Gold Mining Company. The Homestake was the largest, deepest (8240 feet) and most productive gold mine in the Western Hemisphere. It closed in 2001 and has been selected as the site of the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, a proposed NSF facility for low-background experiments on neutrinos, dark matter, and other nuclear physics topics, as well as biology and mine engineering studies.