Kennecott Copper: Plan a Field Trip

Plan a Field Trip

Kennecott's Bingham Canyon Mine Visitors Center is open to the public:

Visitor Center and overlook is OPEN to the public from April 1 to October 31. Seven days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Visitor Center and overlook is CLOSED to the public from November 1 to March 30.

Please call our Visitors Center hotline, at 801.204.2025 for up to date information.

Use this information as you drive through the gate at the Bingham Canyon Mine.

Facts About the Lark Town Site
(As you travel through the entrance to the Bingham Canyon Mine)

Lark was a lead mining and ranching community. The stand of trees off to the right at one time provided shade for the rows of homes in this area.
Kennecott eventually purchased the town site and relocated the last remaining citizens and homes to Copperton.

Facts About Bingham Canyon
Overburden Rock Repositories

The large, cone-shaped mountain due west is the Keystone waste rock repository. It is more than 1,000 feet high. Overburden repositories are sites where overburden or waste rock (the material that is considered uneconomic to process), is brought for disposal. At the present time, Kennecott Utah Copper is not extending these east side waste rock repositories, commonly called dumps. The overburden is now being deposited on top of the east side dumps or in Bingham Canyon.
As you begin heading north, off to the left you will see two structures, one of which looks like a yellow guard rail. This is one of several solar powered monitoring stations that are part of the Eastside Water Collection System. A series of dams collects the water that drains off the dumps and returns it to a facility at the mouth of Bingham Canyon, where it is recycled.
This collection system contains 27 drains and seven miles of pipe.
You will see more reclamation work off to your right. Kennecott Utah Copper experiments with different bio-solids to determine which work best for reclamation at our sites.
Kennecott Utah Copper has planted more than 150,000 trees in these mountains, and more seedlings are planted each year.
The road you are traveling on is through an old waste rock repository. The different colors in the waste rock indicate how water has moved through the repository over time.
Kennecott Utah Copper’s Copperton Concentrator is off to your distant right. The A-frame stores the ore that is carried on a five-mile conveyor from the in-pit crusher in the Mine to the Concentrator. Conveying the ore, instead of hauling it in trucks, reduces air emissions and is more energy efficient.
Beyond the Copperton Concentrator, you can see something that resembles a staircase in the mountainside. Those are the ore leach pads for the Barneys Canyon Mine, a Kennecott gold mining operation. (Additional information about Barneys Canyon is on page 12.)
As you turn the corner heading west, you will be driving parallel to the Bingham Canyon Creek, which is several hundred feet below you in Bingham Canyon

All About Copperton
(As you climb west up the road to the mine)

The small community of Copperton is also in the canyon to your right. Copperton was built in the mid-1920s by the old Utah Copper Company as a company town for employees.
Most of the homes in Copperton had roofs, window screens, gutters, and downspouts made of copper to demonstrate the uses of copper in home construction.
In 1956, Kennecott sold the homes to employees for $4,800 to $6,000.
Today, there are about 280 homes in Copperton housing a population of about 800, many of them retired and active Kennecott employees.
Kennecott Utah Copper maintains a very good working relationship with the community – meeting regularly with the Copperton Town Council to discuss mutual interests and supporting numerous community activities.
Copperton Community Park, built in 1927, is one of the busiest parks in Salt Lake County – a great place to stop for a picnic after your visit to the Bingham Canyon Mine.

A King-Sized Mine Needs - King-Sized Equipment

There are nine giant electric shovels and one hydraulic shovel operating in the mine.
The largest electric shovel has a 56-cubic-yard dipper that scoops up approximately 98 tons of material in a single bite, the equivalent of about 50 automobiles.
The newest electric shovel costs more than $8 million and weighs 2.5 million pounds.
The shovel operator sits more than three stories above the ground (32 feet above ground).
There are about 70 gigantic haulage trucks operating in the mine. These trucks carry from 255 to 320 tons of material in a single trip.
A new haulage truck costs about $2 million.
Each truck tire costs between $18,000 and $20,000 and lasts about nine months . . . and each truck uses six of these radial belted tires.
The largest haulage trucks have 1,000-gallon fuel tanks and use very low-sulfur diesel fuel (.05 percent sulfur by weight), and the fleet of trucks will travel over 10,000 miles a day.
In the pit, haulage trucks travel at an average speed of 15 miles per hour.
The truck driver rides about 18 feet . . . or nearly two stories . . . above the ground.
Dust control measures on haul roads are successfully accomplished using a fleet of six 190-ton (+40,000 gallon) water trucks.
During a typical year, as much as 82,000,000 gallons of industrial water are sprayed on roads to keep the dust under control. Other dust control measures include chemical dust suppressants and paving heavily used areas, such as parking lots.
The mine’s large electric drills stand between 75 and 100 feet tall, and drill blast holes 55 feet deep.

How Big is the Bingham Canyon Mine?

To give you some idea about the size of this mine, it’s three-quarters of a mile deep. Two Sears Tower Buildings stacked on top of each other would not reach the top of the mine. Closer to home, the mine is deeper than 6½ LDS Church Headquarters buildings.
The mine is more than 2½ miles across at the top . . . meaning that 12 aircraft carrier Enterprises could be laid end to end.
This mine has produced more copper than any other mine in history. More than 7 billion tons of material has been mined from here, producing more than 17½ million tons of copper.

When visiting the Bingham Canyon Mine please take time to view the 16-minute video about the Bingham Canyon Mine.

Click here to download our Grade School Quiz.

Click here to download our Educator Tour Guide Information Booklet.