In the mining industry, it's a fact of life and a philosophy: everything starts with a hole in the ground. Ask any miner from the earth-hardened veteran of twenty to thirty years underground to the rugged young roustabout with the razor cut hair style under his hard hat.

Uranium, coal, gold, silver, diamonds, copper and a myriad of other exotic metals, minerals and gems from the original hole in the ground are released to flow up and out in the world to become the wealth of nations.

Nowhere in the world are the raw and often dangerous conditions of the hole in the ground re-created and domed with a graceful white stone and glass museum as they are in Grants, New Mexico, in the "only Uranium Mining Museum in the World."

As visitors wind through "Section 26," posted informational panels detail the work and the equipment inside this underground world.  The self-guided tour is a unique opportunity to see, touch, feel and absorb the atmosphere of the underground world, where thousands of men and women have worked to start the flow of power and wealth to the surface.