The massive underground facility, which has been used to store archives since the 1960s, remains a crucial but convoluted hub for US government records.
Elon Musk recently criticized the U.S. federal retirement process, claiming that paper records must be processed 200 feet underground in a limestone mine in Pennsylvania, leading to delays. While the mine does exist and houses federal records, Musk's portrayal of the process as entirely manual and elevator-dependent is exaggerated. The mine, originally a limestone quarry, was repurposed during the Cold War for secure storage and now serves as a storage facility for federal records. Although some digitization efforts have been made, the process remains inefficient, with an average processing time of 60 days as of 2019. Despite recommendations for automation, progress has been slow, leaving the system reliant on outdated methods. Musk highlighted the inefficiency but did not offer a solution.
