Bingham Canyon Mine
Monday, 1st October 2007 by Alex Turnbull
This is the gargantuan Bingham Canyon Mine - an open-pit copper, gold, silver and molybdenum mine near Salt Lake City, Utah.
In full-scale production since 1906, the pit is over 0.75 miles (1.2 km) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covers 1,900 acres (7.7 km²), making it the largest open-pit copper mine in the world, and the world's largest man-made excavation.
All along the road to the sensibly named mining town of Copperton, we can see the absolutely massive 3 million dollar dump trucks - which are among the largest trucks in the world. Used to transport the raw ore their huge size is a necessity, as by 2004 the mine had produced more than 17 million tons of copper - more copper than any other mine in the world.
See these older posts for more mining related enormity: Casa Grande Copper Mine, Siberian Diamond Mine, The Longest Conveyor Belt in the World, Bucket-Wheel Excavators, Berkeley Pit, Tetraeder Bottrop and Lavender Pit.
Thanks to Dr. Ed Data, Kristian Twombly, Kevin Byrne, John S., Steve Hulet, Zachary and RodneyG
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
No Wikipedia links this time?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingham_Canyon_Mine
Cheers Marc
Ah, thanks Marc – the link was in there, I just neglected to actually link anything to it…
This one is a must see in Google Earth to appreciate fully.
That is a very big hole, but if you look at Chuquicamata at the same scaling, I think you’ll question whether Bingham Canyon is really the largest open pit copper mine in the world.
Here’s a link that works: Chuquicamata
This a large quarry, not as big but it always impressed me. It’s the Thornton Quarry in Thornton, Illinois.
View Placemark
This thing just east of Sean’s Chuquicamata looks pretty cool.
Bingham Canyon seems bigger than Chuquicamata when zooming out I can still see Bingham Canyon along with all of the western United States. Of course that could just be because there is more contrast with its surrounds than Chuquicamata.
myquealer – I think that’s some kind of strip mining. Looks rather cool from up here though!
myquealer – Actually, that appears to be stone (or something else from the ground…) that is being quarried from the mine and placed in that pattern by the machinery (a conveyer) that transports it. I’ve seen photos of that being done at composting facilities as well.
myquealer – spoils, aka tailings. It’s the sand left after everything useful has been removed.