Celebrating
100
years
mines
tagline
– bingham canyon
1909 – 2009
Copper
canyon
Vast resources at Bingham
Canyon mine have allowed
Kennecott Utah Copper to
become a world-leading
copper producer
Highland Boy mine and settlement, 1910.
I
n 1848, a pair of ranchers, Thomas and Sanford
Bingham, settled on a piece of land about 40km
southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah and called it
Bingham Canyon. In 1863, some soldiers from
Fort Douglas began prospecting in the area,
which was rich in minerals and discovered lead ore.
Utah’s first mining district was established in Bingham
that same year. Daniel Jackling, a metallurgical engineer, and Robert Gemmell, a mining engineer, studied the deposit and published a report in 1893 on the
future prospects of the massive low-grade, copper
orebody in Bingham Canyon. They recommended
developing it via a revolutionary, open-pit mining
method and processing the ore on an industrial scale.
Utah Copper Co
On June 4, 1903, Utah Copper Co was formed to mine
and process a copper ore reserve in a mountain at
Bingham Canyon, based on the recommendations of
Jackling and Gemmell. A number of underground
mines were developed – including Silver Hill,
Highland Boy and Carr Fork – and a 300t/d gravity
pilot mill was established at Copperton. In 1906,
some of the world’s first steam shovels began
open-pit mining on ‘The Hill’, which is today known as
The Pit. At about the same time, American Smelting &
Refining Co (ASARCO) built the Garfield smelter
nearby to serve the growing industry.
The miners and their families set up home in the
villages around the Bingham Canyon mine, boosting
the area’s population to nearly 20,000. In 1873, the
construction of a railway eased transport constraints
up the narrow valley (see photo), with a number of
aerial tramways providing extra transport links. The
longest of these opened in 1910 and ran from
Highland Boy to a smelter at Tooele.
The Bingham and Garfield railroad was added in
1907 to carry ore from Bingham to the Magna and
Arthur mills at the northern base of the Oquirrh
Mountains. Utah Copper’s Magna mill, a 6,000t/d
operation, opened in 1907, followed by Boston
Consolidated’s 3,000t/d Arthur mill in 1909. In 1910,
Utah Copper Company acquired Boston Consolidated, gaining sole ownership of the mills.
In 1915, Alaska’s Kennecott Copper Corp acquired
25% of Utah Copper, and in 1939 it purchased all of
Utah’s property and assets. That same year, ASARCO
and Utah Copper jointly built the first acid-treatment
In 1873 a railway was constructed
plant to control sulphur-dioxide emissions at Garfield
smelter. From 1918-22, froth flotation replaced
gravity separation at the Magna and Arthur mills.
Electric shovels began operating at Bingham in 1923,
and by 1928 electric locomotives were introduced.
In 1929, during the Great Depression, Utah Copper
built a precipitate plant at the mouth of Bingham
Canyon, and molybdenum separation facilities were
established at the Magna and Arthur mills.
Construction of the first mine rail-haulage tunnel
began in 1946. The main rail line was completed in
1948, and replaced the Bingham and Garfield line.
This new line had a central, traffic-control system to
provide safer and faster movement of longer trains.
The 1950s began with the opening of electrolytic
refining at the Garfield refinery. This process produced
copper cathodes, gold bars, silver bars and commercialgrade selenium. By 1958, construction had begun on
a third mine rail-haulage tunnel and Kennecott
bought ASARCO’s Garfield smelter a year later.
Kennecott expanded its power plant in 1960 to
175,000kW capacity. In 1963, the company began a
four-year, US$1 million expansion of its operations.
Parts of this programme led to the 1965 opening of a
cone-precipitate plant at Bingham and the Bonneville
concentrator, and a molybdenum-oxide production
plant at the Garfield smelter in 1966.
Rio Tinto
In 1947, Utah Copper Co was dissolved and became
the Utah Copper division of Kennecott Copper Corp.
In 1981, Standard Oil of Ohio (SOHIO) purchased
Kennecott, and Kennecott became a subsidiary of BP
Minerals in 1987, when BP purchased an outstanding
minority interest in SOHIO. In 1989, Kennecott Utah
Copper, then part of BP Minerals, was acquired by
RTZ Corporation, which later became Rio Tinto.
In 1986, Kennecott began a US$4 million
modernisation programme of the ore-processing
facilities at Bingham Canyon. An in-pit crusher was
installed at the mine, along with a transfer conveying
system and a new ore concentrator. The refurbished
Copperton concentrator was commissioned in
February 1988, with three grinding lines capable of
processing 85,000t/d.
A fourth mill line began operating at Copperton in
January 1992, adding an additional 32,000t of copper
and 84,000oz of gold to its annual production capacity.
Plans were also made in 1992 for the construction of
a new US$880 million smelter, west of Salt Lake City,
to allow Kennecott to process all of its concentrate
in-house. The project was completed in 1995.
Today
Kennecott Utah Copper now produces approximately
300,000t/y of copper cathode at Bingham Canyon, as
well as gold, silver and molybdenum. The copper ore,
which averages about 0.6% copper, is mined and
crushed in the pit before being taken by conveyer
belt to the Copperton concentrator.
Kennecott is now planning a surface expansion
project for Bingham Canyon, which will allow mining
to continue beyond its current life expectancy, of
2020, to 2036. The pit will be extended towards the
south side, and Kennecott engineers are studying the
possibility of constructing a deep, underground mine.
Some of the core samples from exploration drills,
several thousand feet below the surface of the mine,
contain relatively high-grade copper, molybdenum,
gold and silver ores. The underground portion would
begin operating in the 2030s and extend the mine’s
life well into the 2050s.
18 Mining Magazine September 2009
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