Iron Mountain Incorporated

Founding and early years (1951–1970)

The company was started by Herman Knaust, who had made his fortune growing and marketing mushrooms. He purchased a depleted iron ore mine and 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land in Kingston, New York, for $9,000 in 1936. By 1950, the mushroom market had shifted, and Knaust was looking for alternative uses for his mine, which he had named "Iron Mountain." Knaust saw a business opportunity amidst widespread Cold War fears to protect corporate information from nuclear attack and other disasters.

The company was originally founded in 1951 as Iron Mountain Atomic Storage Corporation; it opened its first underground "vaults" in 1951 and its first sales office in the Empire State Building, about 125 miles (201 km) south. Iron Mountain's first customer was East River Savings Bank, which brought microfilm copies of deposit records and duplicate signature cards in armored cars for storage in the mountain facility.

Middle years (1970–2000)

This first iteration of Iron Mountain was bankrupt by the early 1970s and was wholly acquired by Vincent J. Ryan through his holdings in Schooner Capital Corporation, Boston, Massachusetts. At the time, it consisted of the original facility in Livingston, New York and IMAR (Iron Mountain at Rosendale), a former limestone mine and mushroom cave outside of Kingston, New York.

In 1978, the company opened its first above-ground records-storage facility. In 1980, it expanded to Rhode Island through the purchase of a former Industrial National Bank (a precursor to FleetBoston) cold site and data tape repository in Glocester, Rhode Island. It had many Fortune 500 clients at the time, and its revenue was in the $6 million range in the early 1980s.

In the mid-1980s, it convinced Manufacturers Hanover Bank to move all its paper records out of Manhattan to an above-ground facility, a former strip mall in Port Ewen, New York. This was the first time a records management company used barcodes to enable real-time access to shipped boxes and the documents inside.

During the 1980s, the company expanded beyond New York, opening facilities throughout New York and New England, and in 1988, extended its reach into 12 more U.S. markets by acquiring Bell & Howell Records Management, Inc. The firm went public on January 31, 1996. In 1997, Iron Mountain became a leading software escrow company with the acquisition of Data Securities International (DSI). In 1998, Iron Mountain made its first overseas acquisition by buying British Data Management, Ltd. The company reported a $423 million revenues by the end of the same fiscal year of its acquisition.

Expansion and consolidation (2000–present)

In February 2000, Iron Mountain Incorporated announced the completion of its acquisition of Pierce Leahy Corp. (NYSE:PLH) in a stock-for-stock merger valued at approximately $1.1 billion. In 2004, Iron Mountain formed a digital assets division called "Iron Mountain Digital", following the acquisition of Connected Corporation, a maker of online PC backup software. In 2005, Iron Mountain Digital bought LiveVault, a provider of online backup software for server data. In 2007 Iron Mountain acquired Stratify Inc., one of the larger e-discovery service providers at the production end of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). The acquired businesses of LiveVault and Stratify Inc. were consolidated into Iron Mountain Digital. In 1981, Richard Reese became the company's CEO. In 1995, he concurrently assumed the position of chairman. He remained as CEO until June 2008, when he was replaced by Bob Brennan, but he remained in the chairman's seat. In April 2011, the company announced Brennan's departure, and Reese resumed his former title.

In February 2010, Iron Mountain acquired California-based eDiscovery and content archiving software provider, Mimosa Systems. The acquisition, too, was absorbed into Iron Mountain Digital. In May 2011, Iron Mountain divested Iron Mountain Digital, which was acquired by the British enterprise search and knowledge management firm Autonomy Corporation for $380 million. In August 2011, Hewlett-Packard acquired the Cambridge-based Autonomy, and amalgamated the operations of Autonomy (which included Iron Mountain Digital) into HP's enterprise software division. In May 2012, Iron Mountain expanded its high-security storage facility business through the acquisition of three records storage firms—File House Offsite Record Storage in Fredericksburg, Virginia; and Document Systems Inc. in Columbia, South Carolina; and First National Safe Deposit in Philadelphia. In November 2013, Iron Mountain announced it would be shutting down its Saint John, New Brunswick, contact center in 2014.

Iron Mountain has underground storage facilities in the United States and the rest of the world, but most of the company's over 1,500 storage locations are in above-ground leased warehouse space located near customers. Its storage location in Dighton, Massachusetts was once a missile storage battery during the Cold War.

The best-known Iron Mountain storage facility is a 1.7 million sq. ft. high-security storage facility in a former limestone quarry at Boyers, Pennsylvania, near the city of Butler in the United States (41.093°N 79.911°W / 41.093; -79.911). The facility features climate controlled storage areas protected by armed guards. It began storing records in 1954 and was purchased by Iron Mountain in 1998. It is here that Bill Gates stores his Corbis photographic collection in a refrigerated cave 220 feet (67 m) underground, as well as where Universal Music Group stores its United States masters.

Nearby, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management leases another cavern to store, and process government employee retirement papers. Appearing at an event in the Oval Office alongside President Donald Trump in February 2025, Elon Musk criticized the OPM's use of this facility. In a Special Report episode Musk and his team ridiculed "the mine," insinuating it was the bottleneck limiting the number of retirement applications that could be processed. The factual accuracy of some aspects of Musk's account have been disputed by journalists and former government employees, although the Government Accountability Office noted problems with the OPM's handling of paperwork in 2019.

The company stores the wills of Princess Diana, Charles Dickens, and Charles Darwin. It also houses the original recordings of Frank Sinatra, as well as master recordings from Sony Music Entertainment (over a million recordings; reportedly in Rosendale, New York), Universal Music Group (in Butler), and Warner Music Group (in southern California). In order to protect the masters, Iron Mountain equips some of its music-holding facilities with professional studios so the masters never have to leave the premises. Over 1,800 cans of unclaimed nitrate film formerly held by Iron Mountain now make up the Iron Mountain Collection at the Academy Film Archive.

Other controversies

St. Louis public television station KETC sued Iron Mountain in 2026 for access to 70 years worth of archived footage that the station owns but is housed in an Iron Mountain data center in the Denver area. Iron Mountain claims a third party that went out of the business owned the system hosting KETC’s data. A district judge in Denver issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Iron Mountain from altering the material in any way.