On the list of strangest uses of public lands, Minnesota's Soudan Underground Mine State Park has to be near the top. This 1,300-acre slice of the north woods includes half-mile trips underground, colonies of tens of thousands of bats, a frozen-in-time iron mining complex, and massive particle physics laboratories. Oh, and a recently discovered bacterium that seems to have been subsisting on solid rock a thousand feet underground (life on Mars, anyone?). No wonder the park was recently named one of the "Top 25 Road Trips for Nerds" by Popular Science.
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