The Leo on Wheels: Sunset Ridge and South Hills
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Blog entry by Ian McClintick, from The Leo on Wheels staff
The Leo on Wheels recently visited Sunset Ridge Middle School and South Hills Middle School. At both visits we noticed a large gap in the nearby mountains. If you are local, you know that that gap is the site of the Bingham Canyon Mine. The science and the history of the mine are both interesting and important to Utah.
In its earlier years, the mine employed countless immigrants to Utah, shaping the current cultural heritage of the state by attracting Norwegians, Italians, Greeks, Mexicans and others to work at the mine and live in the town of Bingham (which no longer exists because the ground it stood on was cleared away in the mine's later expansion!).
Utah Copper Company mill circa 1910
(photo from Utah State History collection)
If The Leo on Wheels staff decided to visit the mine during our lunch break, we would have seen a hole about 2.75 miles across and 0.75 miles deep. If we wanted to hike to the bottom of the mine, we would have had to walk down the 500 miles of road in the mine...and probably wouldn't have made it back for the next class. The Bingham mine has produced 18.1 million tons of copper -- more than any other mine in history.
Bingham mine as it looks today
(photo from Wikipedia Commons)
The technology used to process the copper, molybdenum, gold, and silver at the rate and scale of the Bingham mine is impressive. Once mined, the material is transported by a fleet of 70 trucks that can each carry 255 tons of material. The trucks carry the material to a conveyer, which then travels through a 5-mile tunnel in the Oquirrh Mountains to the Copperton Concentrator at the southern end of the Great Salt Lake. The concentrator crushes the mined material which then goes through a floatation process that separates waste from the minerals.
So next time you take a look at the Oquirrh Mountains and see that break in the peaks, think about the Bingham Mine and the technology over the ridge. If you feel like learning more about the mine take a drive up there and take the tour, I guarantee you’ll be impressed and surprised with the science and history of the Bingham Mine.
Labels: education, science, The Leo on Wheels
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