Welcome to Iron Mountain

‘ ‘ ‘ I don’t know if Iron Mountain would show up on film because my camera was confiscated as… ‘ ‘ ‘ I don’t know if Iron Mountain would show up on film because my camera was confiscated as soon as I arrived. I don’t seem to be in a position to check, either, because although I’ve completed the hour-long drive to the site, I don’t know how I got there. ‘ ‘ ‘ It took two forms of photo ID, eight phone calls, the blatant exploitation of my uncle’s job connections, a suspected ‘mdash; though not confirmed ‘mdash; background check, an escort, credentials and a fire extinguisher before I was allowed to go into the facility, which, at first glance, is little more than a big hole in the ground beneath the woods of rural Pennsylvania. ‘ ‘ ‘ Iron Mountain is a historian’s holy grail. It’s Santa’s underground lair. It’s the safest place to be in a nuclear attack, and it’s the burial site of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Billy the Kid, testimony of Nazi war crimes and the original patent for the Red Delicious apple. It’s all that and a bag of chips. Seriously ‘mdash; they have a cafeteria down there, too. ‘ ‘ ‘ Before it was any of that, however, it was U.S. Steel’s limestone mine, and it was productive. ‘ ‘ ‘ From 1908 to 1952, 500 miners cleared more than 20 miles of tunnels and 1,000 acres of space below the ground. By the company’s estimate, miners removed enough limestone to pave a six-lane highway from New York to San Francisco. ‘ ‘ ‘ But when it became clear that it was more cost-effective to use surface mining, U.S Steel abandoned the colossal limestone labyrinth. ‘ ‘ ‘ When the mine closed in 1952, the nation couldn’t stop looking over its shoulder, fear and paranoia gestating in its collective consciousness as the Cold War seeped into newspapers, TV shows, gossip and daily errands.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Less than one year later, a nervous U.S. government began whispering to CEOs through classified memos and newspaper articles that they had better cover their asses and put their assets underground. As so often happens in times of crisis, an entrepreneur emerged to ease the people’s pain and make a harmless buck or two while he was at it. ‘ ‘ ‘ In Iron Mountain’s case, the enterprising spirit was Larry Yont, an employee of U.S. Steel who knew of the abandoned mine and bought it to lease as a combination document-storage facility and nuclear holocaust-proof fallout shelter for the country’s business elite. ‘ ‘ ‘ Yont set to work making the mine the homiest darn maximum-security cave this nation had ever (not) seen. He brought in crews to outfit the place with its own sewage and water-treatment systems, bus routes, fire brigade, police force, executive bedrooms and lounges and a generator capable of running the entire facility for seven days in the event of the loss of commercial power.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Executives interested in taking out nuclear-attack insurance in the form of sleep space in Iron Mountain got neat twin beds with frilly dust ruffles and hip lounges with kidney-shaped coffee tables, modular couches and stylish lamps with wide shades like Chinese farmers’ hats. ‘ ‘ ‘ Today’s mine still has snatches of its 1950s makeover, but the domestic touches are a thing of the past. The couches and tables have been traded for filing cabinets, and computers and documents are the new VIPs of the underground. Inside the vault ‘ ‘ ‘ I would be lying if I said a big part of me wasn’t let down when I realized that disappointingly few of Iron Mountain’s employees were pasty to the point of translucence. ‘ ‘ ‘ I wanted scary-large pupils, dark hair and a skittish, mole-ish look about them. I wanted a disproportionate number of them to have a chronic case of the sniffles. ‘ ‘ ‘ But for people with precious few hours of sun exposure a day ‘mdash; and only on weekends in the winter ‘mdash; the workers at Iron Mountain looked surprisingly robust. Some even had the nerve to be tan. ‘ ‘ ‘ Beyond a quick glance at the workers as I signed in at the security desk, however, there wasn’t much time for interaction. ‘ ‘ ‘ My tour guide, a petite redhead with an easy smile, cold hands and high-heeled wedge shoes, served as my guide for the day, and she had plans for us. ‘ ‘ ‘ Our first stop inside the mine was her boss’s office, where the two of them sat me down and explained ‘mdash; in detail ‘mdash; all the ways I could get them fired. ‘ ‘ ‘ They said there were names I could not use but mentioned nothing about descriptions. I couldn’t say that broadcast company X was a customer, but I might get away with saying a big-three national network whose symbol is an eye stores documents there (wink, wink).’ ‘ ‘ ‘ I couldn’t say that I had been inside the legendary film studio vault that cleverly opens just before Christmas every year to re-release a classic animated feature ‘for a limited time only!’ but I could say I saw the original film reel for ‘Bambi.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ But I wasn’t the only one operating under restrictions. Of the roughly 2,000 employees who work inside the mine every day, only a select few are aware of which customers are behind every door. ‘ ‘ ‘ For the hundreds of vaults currently in use, fewer than 10 people have access to any given room. ‘ ‘ ‘ The vault doors, solid metal contraptions that give you the uneasy feeling of being stuck inside a walkin freezer when they shut, are mostly marked with number-letter codes instead of company names. ‘ ‘ ‘ Even the high profile customers who agree to have signifying labels painted on their doors do so in an understated way, without text. I saw castles, government seals and acronyms, but few names. ‘ ‘ ‘ From the inside, the vaults in Iron Mountain give the impression of being nowhere so much as inside tin-foiled leftovers in a cooler. The walls, still raked and scarred in jagged contours from the mining days, are painted tinsel-silver. ‘ ‘ ‘ They almost reflect the cold of the rooms, which, partly by nature, partly by design, are kept between a brisk 70 and -4 degrees Fahrenheit, 30 to 2.5 percent humidity, depending upon the clients’ specifications and the type of documents inside. ‘ ‘ ‘ Customization doesn’t end with climate control ‘mdash; not even close. Iron Mountain’s clients can choose from any number of different bells and whistles ‘mdash; in both the metaphorical and literal sense. Alarms come standard, but extra safety devices like ground wires for rogue water detection, gaseous or water-based fire suppression systems and even custom doors can be installed upon request. ‘ ‘ ‘ Vaults range in sizes from efficiency apartment to small Wal-Mart. For larger companies, the rooms are about 600 feet long by 40 feet wide with 14-foot ceilings. Buried treasure ‘ ‘ ‘ When we first enter the Somerset County vault, my guide picks a fraying leather-bound ledger from the shelf. Leafing through pages the color of tea stains, she laughs, pointing to a list in careful cursive of all the eligible bachelors in the town in the 1880s. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if they kept records of those things now?’ she asks. ‘ ‘ ‘ But a shelf away, the containers look different, more modern. A rack like the kind used to display unfurled prints in art shops is full of hanging white paper, covered with names and messages. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘Somerset County is where flight 93 crashed on 9/11,’ said the guide. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘Half the vault is old records ‘mdash; birth certificates, death certificates, tax payments and things like that, and the other half is the temporary storage space for the memorials people set up at the crash site.” ‘ ‘ ‘ A park bench with carvings and poems and names sits in the middle of the room, a label resembling a toe tag hanging from its armrest. Wreaths, teddy bears, signs, flowers, all of it boxed, sit in limbo until the county’s memorial museum can be erected. ‘ ‘ ‘ Perhaps the most impressive array of cabinets is behind one of the doors we didn’t go through. The vault belongs to Corbis, an information management company started by Bill Gates that has seen a lot of traffic these days. ‘ ‘ ‘ Corbis purchased the famed Bettmann Archive, a vast collection of more than 11 million iconic photos and their negatives accumulated by Otto Bettmann beginning from 1935. ‘ ‘ ‘ After years of storage in the back of a New York City office building, Corbis moved the 19 tractor-trailer loads of filing cabinets and images to Iron Mountain, where they are now being digitized before they disintegrate. ‘ ‘ ‘ In a CBS News documentary on the archive, viewers see yellowed file folders no bigger than index cards hanging in stacks like a library’s old Dewey Decimal catalog. ‘ ‘ ‘ They hold brittle negatives, warped and crinkled with age like discarded cellophane candy wrappers. Some negatives are so old they’re beginning to smell like vinegar as they melt in on themselves, the documentary says. ‘ ‘ ‘ Gates’ plan with Corbis, the documentary says, is to create digital records that can preserve the images indefinitely and be archived in an online database for public access. ‘ ‘ ‘ Most any image seen in the pages of history books or in ancient issues of ‘Life Magazine’ can be found inside Iron Mountain, along with millions of which the public is hardly aware. ‘ ‘ ‘ The black-and-white shot of overalled construction workers sitting on a support beam high over Manhattan taking a lunch break rubs elbows with Einstein sticking his tongue out and John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s coffin. ‘ ‘ ‘ The amount of film reel alone stored in Iron Mountain is estimated to be enough to fill 20 standard-sized houses and their garages from floor to roof. ‘ ‘ ‘ Film in segmented CMYK ‘mdash; cerulean, magenta, yellow, black ‘mdash; versions is stored in reels kept in hard plastic shells that are roughly the size and shape of tambourines. ‘ ‘ ‘ Each container is bar-coded and stacked according to Iron Mountain’s unique classification system and lined up in aisles and aisles of giant metal shelves. I felt small walking through in the same way I feel tiny and acutely accident-prone when I step inside a Home Depot. ‘ ‘ ‘ In other vaults, like those dedicated to hospitals or to archival photographs, the aisles are filing cabinets. ‘ ‘ ‘ Hospitals, the guide told me, store documents, slides and biological samples from tests like biopsies in the vaults for two reasons: One, it’s a refrigerated version of their patients’ medical histories. And two, since the number of beds a hospital contains directly correlates with their profits, storing old but vital records off-site frees up space to accommodate more patients. ‘ ‘ ‘ But Iron Mountain preserves the darker side of human history, as well, where glamour shots and 1,000-watt smiles are conspicuously absent. One vault is filled floor to ceiling with tapes labeled, ‘Interviews: Survivors of the Shoah.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ The labels list the names of the interviewers, interviewees, locations and languages. Every tape offers the personal account of a different survivor from the concentration camps of World War II. Many of their stories were used in the making of ‘Schindler’s List.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Polish, Czech, French, German and a chorus of other voices of pain lay dormant in a hollow room underground, patiently waiting to speak. ‘ Classified ‘ ‘ ‘ There is another part of Iron Mountain that my guide can’t tell me much about, because she’s never seen it herself. ‘ ‘ ‘ Blowing by on our golf cart, the main form of transport in the mine, there are many vaults with facade entranceways, made to look like hallways and staterooms ‘mdash; in short, masquerading as normal offices. ‘ ‘ ‘ One, in particular, has been made into two levels (the ceiling inside is high enough to accommodate such things) and is painted and carpeted out front. The peach walls and dark wood chair rail and brass knob on a faux wood vault door catch visitors off guard. ‘ ‘ ‘ It looks like a stateroom, but is exposed to the open mine like a dollhouse. These vaults, by and large, are the realm of the U.S. government. ‘ ‘ ‘ Iron Mountain’s relationship with the federal government is the same as that of the American Embassy in China ‘mdash; one entity owns the outside, the other owns the inside.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Rather than relying on Iron Mountain employees, the feds bring their own. My tour guide doesn’t see them around much, she said, because the government staffs work from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then split. ‘ ‘ ‘ All the bureaus one would expect to have storage space in Iron Mountain: Social Security records, The Library of Congress, U.S. Patents (which includes several signed by George Washington). But recently, things underground have upped the intrigue a little past mere dusty documents. ‘ ‘ ‘ National Public Radio’s Pam Fessler reported on the sudden swell of government jobs in Iron Mountain less than a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ‘ ‘ ‘ By February 2002, government space in Iron Mountain had come to include rooms staffed with computer stations and caseworkers conducting background checks on the 180,000-some applicants for government jobs, Fessler reported. ‘ ‘ ‘ Because planes were being used as vehicles for terrorism, airports were increasing their security. That meant there were more jobs pertinent to national safety. For those applicants alone, the government had to interview, question and check criminal records of family, friends, neighbors, fourth grade teachers and sandbox play-dates. ‘ ‘ ‘ How exactly does all this work? The guide could tell me, but then she’d have to kill me.