Imagine digging a hole so big and so deep that it has
to have streetlights along the road to the bottom.
The Bingham Canyon Mine, also known as the Kennecott
Copper Mine, is an open-pit mining operation extracting
a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake
City, Utah, USA, in the Oquirrh Mountains.
Feedback for those who dowsed the location map.
It is the deepest open-pit mine in the world. The mine is owned
by Rio Tinto Group, an international mining and exploration
company headquartered in the United Kingdom. However, the
copper operations are managed through Kennecott Utah Copper
Corporation which operates the mine, a concentrator plant,
a smelter, and a refinery. The process of getting the
copper out of the ground is complex and is shown in the
following 6 minute video (just in case you got any of
the aspects of the mine in your viewing, and for feedback
for the advanced viewers.)
The mine has been in production since 1906, and has
resulted in the creation of a pit over 0.75 miles (1.2 km)
deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres
(7.7 km²). According to Kennecott, it is the world's
largest man-made excavation. It was designated a National
Historic Landmark in 1966 under the name Bingham Canyon
Open Pit Copper Mine, and is now open to tourism. Daily
tours are given so people can watch the blasting of the
canyon walls, have their pictures made besides the gigantic
equipment, and learn more about the processes of copper
mining.
Every year from April through October the visitor center
is open for curious travelers. Inside the center are
interactive exhibits, mineral samples and a 16-minute
video overview of the mine. But the center’s
coolest feature is the superb viewing platform
from which it is oddly compelling to watch the
goings on below. Though the machinery that operates
in the mine is massive in comparison to, say, your
car, it appears tiny relative to the enormous mine.
It is hard to look down at the scene and not imagine
that you're just looking at toy trucks in a very
large sand pit. (Compare the trucks in the
picture below to the loader with the 4 trucks shown
below, waiting to be loaded with ore, and the regular
sized pickup truck behind them.)
If you got impressions for which this feedback is
insufficient, more information,
pictures and videos can be found at the following
web sites:
