Storybrooke Mines

The Storybrooke Mines is a Storybrooke location on ABC's Once Upon a Time. It first appears in the fourth episode of the second season.

History
Following the breaking of the Dark Curse, Emma and Mary Margaret are transported to the Enchanted Forest due to a mishap with a portal. David and the dwarves mine for diamonds, which can be turned into fairy dust; an essential ingredient necessary for opening a portal with a magic hat and bringing the two women home. In the midst of this, Belle is having a hard time getting Mr. Gold to open up to her about his reasons for still experimenting with magic. Upset, she takes off without notifying him. While curiously taking a look at the town library, she is kidnapped by a man man and taken to her father, Moe. He wishes for her to leave Mr. Gold permanently, but Belle resists the idea. Moe takes matters into his own hands by making his accomplice to send Belle on a minecart towards the town border and lose her Enchanted Forest memories. Underground, she is cuffed to the cart while it speeds out of town. She tries to free herself with a key, but drops it on the mine tracks. Luckily, Belle is saved by Mr. Gold's magic, but she tells him and her father to stay out of her life. Later, Mr. Gold admits to her that he needs magic as a way to find his long lost son. This leads Belle to reconcile with him.
 * -|After Broken Curse=

After some days of mining, Happy begin assembling the other dwarves for a hard earned lunch break while Leroy persistantly continues hammering at a wall. It collapses and sends him falling into a secret cavern with a large amount of diamonds embedded in the ceiling. David, Henry and Mother Superior are informed and arrive to inspect the cave. Mother Superior agrees that the diamonds can be made into fairy dust and asks David to keep the hat safe. They celebrate the success with a late night drinking binge at the diner. However, their plans are ruined when Albert, in an attempt to sabotoge David's life, burns the hat over a fire; making it impossible to use.

Emma and Mary Margaret race to return to Storybrooke by fighting against Cora and Hook for an open portal at Lake Nostos. Both Mr. Gold and Regina fear Cora will be the one arriving in town instead, and decide not to take the chance. They absorb all the diamonds in the mines with a wand and turn it into fairy dust. At the wishing well, Mr. Gold creates a trap so whoever comes through the portal will be instantly killed. Leroy and Ruby discover the theft and notify Henry, who persuades Regina to have faith that Emma and Mary Margaret will come through instead of Cora. She lifts the trap just as the two women pop out of the portal.

Out of a desire to keep Cora from harming any more innocent lives, Mary Margaret curses the woman's heart and purposely misleads Regina into returning it to its rightful owner. This causes Cora's death, though Mary Margaret suffers repercussions from her own actions not only by feeling guilt, but also incurring the vengeful wraith of Regina. Mr. Gold informs David and Emma of Regina's plans to enact a spell to force Henry to love her while sacrificing the heart of the person she hates most, Mary Margaret, as an ingredient. Henry disagrees with his family's solution of killing Regina to stop her murder spree and runs away to the mines. He grabs some dynamite and heads to the wishing well, hoping to blow it up and get rid of magic, as this is the one thing ruining his whole family's lives. David, Emma and Neal figure out what Henry is doing once they notice the dynamite is missing and hurry to stop him. A confrontation with Regina ensues and ends when Henry calls for both sides to stop fighting over magic. Regina placates him by burning the spell she wanted to cast.

Magic hunters Greg and Tamara find the key to Storybrooke's annihilation in the form of a trigger. They set it off in the mines, much to Hook's displeasure, who abandons them and realigns himself on Emma's side to stop the impending danger. Regina goes to slow down the trigger with her magic while David and Hook steal back a magic bean from Greg to take everyone back to the Enchanted Forest. She willingly decides to stay behind, and asks Emma to tell Henry of her heroic deeds. The strategy changes when Emma and her family rush into the mines to use the bean to send the trigger into a vortex. However, Hook previously took the bean for himself, leaving everyone else stranded with no other options. Regina is nearing her limit in holding back the trigger until she and Emma combine powers to halt the destruction permanently. In the distraction, Henry is kidnapped by Greg and Tamara to Neverland while Emma and her allies follow them.

Belle is left behind in Storybrooke with the task to put up a barrier to keep more outsiders from entering into town. Along with Archie, Mother Superior and the dwarves, they enter the mines. The dwarves break open a crack in a boulder of fairy dust while Belle dumps the potion into the crevice. Despite enacting the barrier, Belle doesn't feel like a hero and desires to do more to help. Her chance comes when a visitor from Neverland, Ariel, comes bearing a message from Mr. Gold. Belle is instructed by him to find a specific item in the pawnshop to defeat Peter Pan and save Henry. Eventually, she unearths Pandora's Box, but two strangers working for Pan, John and Michael, trap her and Ariel while they take the item into the mines to destroy it. Belle and Ariel catch up and knock them away from the box with a minecart. Once Belle regains the box, John and Michael begin pleading for her not to help Mr. Gold. When they admit to being Pan's lackeys only because he imprisoned their sister Wendy, Belle coaxes them into allowing Mr. Gold to use the box to defeat their shared nemesis.