One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

Over the years, the federal presence at Bruceton expanded as the government purchased 72 acres
around the experimental mine in 1924 and purchased 146 additional acres at the site in the 1940s
and 1950s. The large acreage was necessary because of the dangers of storing explosives on site
and the explosion tests conducted at the experimental mine. By 1970, Bureau research continued
to be divided between the locations at Bruceton and at Forbes Avenue. During the early 1970s,
research was consolidated at Bruceton, and the Forbes Avenue facility was used primarily by the
inspectorate part of the Bureau, which eventually became part of MESA and then MSHA.
The Lake Lynn Laboratory facility was opened by the Bureau in 1982 (see Figure 34). Lake
Lynn Laboratory is a 400-acre facility near Fairchance, PA, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh
on the Pennsylvania-West Virginia state boundary. The laboratory was constructed by driving
new underground entries adjacent to the workings of an abandoned limestone mine. The new
entries simulate the configurations found in modern underground coal mines.
Figure 34. Main portal for the Lake Lynn Laboratory near Fairchance, PA.
Lake Lynn Laboratory’s primary purpose was as a new experimental mine for mine explosion
testing. Due to the proximity of dwellings built as suburban Pittsburgh expanded to the Bruceton
area, the experimental mine at Bruceton could no longer be used for testing large explosions.
The Lake Lynn facility was also used for many other types of mining research. The surface
facilities at Lake Lynn are in an isolated environment, which allows for large-scale testing in an
environmentally controlled manner.
5.5.2 Twin Cities Research Center
The Twin Cities Research Center began with Congress authorizing a Bureau metallurgical
research station at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis in 1915. In 1920, this location
was called the North Central Experiment Station. Mining research began shortly after the end of
World War II in a new Minneapolis branch of the Bureau’s Mining Division in downtown
Minneapolis. The Bureau acquired land in 1951 at the Fort Snelling site in Minneapolis on the
banks of the Mississippi River near the airport. New buildings were constructed at the Fort
Snelling site and the main building was opened in 1959, housing both metallurgical and mining
research centers of the Bureau. In the 1979 reorganization, the Metallurgical and Mining centers
were merged and the combined laboratory was named the Twin Cities Research Center.
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