A Brand-New Cat Shovel Is Still Buried in America's Deepest Gold Mine (1995)

At ten minutes to two in the morning on January 5, 1995, an 80-foot highwall inside the Homestake Open Cut at Lead, South Dakota leaned out and let go. Fifty thousand tons of rock buried a nearly-new Caterpillar 5130 shovel and the man running it. The federal investigation found the collapse was not bad luck. The other wall had already failed six hours earlier, and a worker had said out loud at lunch that he was afraid of that wall - ninety minutes before it came down. We pulled the MSHA fatal accident report and walked through exactly what happened, who got cited, and the one question we still can't answer: was that shovel ever dug back out, or is it still down there under the backfill? Every fact in this video is verified against primary sources. No manufacturer talking points, no clickbait speculation. 00:00 The wall starts to move 01:30 The richest 100 square miles on Earth 04:00 The warning nobody acted on 07:30 Nine hours of digging 10:30 Is the shovel still down there? Our partner channel Construction Legends covers the machines that built mines like this in full detail - link in the comments.