Bingham Canyon Mine

Bingham Canyon Mine is a vast open-pit copper mine in Utah’s Oquirrh Mountains, operated by Rio Tinto. It is one of the world’s largest human-made excavations.

Open-pit mining: A surface-mining method that extracts ore by excavating a stepped pit. Bingham Canyon’s terraced excavation is a defining example of this mining method.
Bingham Canyon: A canyon in Utah’s Oquirrh Mountains that became the site of a major mining district. The mine takes its name from this canyon, whose mineral discovery began the district’s development.
2013 Bingham Canyon Mine landslide: A massive slope failure at Bingham Canyon Mine on April 10, 2013. The slide demonstrated the geotechnical risks of expanding a deep open pit.
Bingham Canyon Mine landslide: The 2013 slope failure at Bingham Canyon Mine, among the largest non-volcanic landslides recorded. Its scale and monitoring provide a landmark case in open-pit slope stability.
Porphyry copper deposit: A large, low-grade copper deposit associated with intrusive igneous rocks and disseminated mineralization. This deposit type makes enormous open-pit extraction economically viable.
Enos Andrew Wall: An American prospector credited with discovering copper ore in Bingham Canyon in 1863. Wall’s discovery drew attention to copper deposits that later supported large-scale mining.
Kennecott smokestack: A 1,215-foot industrial chimney near Salt Lake City built to disperse smelter emissions. It reflects the mine’s regional industrial footprint and efforts to manage sulfur dioxide pollution.
Garfield Smelter: A copper smelter in Garfield, Utah, associated with ore from Bingham Canyon. It is a key downstream facility linking the mine’s concentrates to refined copper.
Copper extraction: The processes used to separate copper from mined ore and produce usable metal. Ore from the mine is processed through concentration and smelting to recover copper.
Utah Copper Company: A mining company formed in 1903 to develop copper deposits at Bingham Canyon. Its adoption of large-scale open-pit mining transformed the canyon into an industrial mine.

Linked from 6 pages