Friday, September 5, 2008

Bingham Canyon Copper Mine

Last Saturday we took a trip to the Bingham Canyon Copper mine. Garin works on a Kid's club magazine for the company he works for. His page this time is on big stuff and this is the perfect place to see big 'Stuff'! (Don't you love Amellia's shoes and socks! Her fashion sense cracks me up sometimes!)
The mine is the largest man made excavation in the world and can be seen from space! The size of it is almost unbelievable. My picture doesn't do it justice so click here! This mine has produced 17 million tons of copper and they plan to continue mine well into the future. It is deep enough that you could stack 2 Sears towers on top of each other in it and still not reach the top. If you have time to read or browse here is some more interesting information.
This is a tire of the trucks that hall the debris out of the pit to be processed. Each tire on these big trucks costs from $18,000 to $26,000 and lasts just 9 months.
These trucks are 23 ft tall and can hall 255-320 tons of rock! The shovels that load these bad boys can scoop 98 tons at a time. And when they are down in the pit they look like little toys.
Besides the pit they have an interesting museum as well at the visitor center. This is definitely a great place to take some time and visit.

2 friends said...:

Autumn said...

Rockin' sock there, Amellia!

We've been to a copper mine here is AZ and have seen first hand what you are sharing here. The tires are HUMUNGO. It's crazy at how much each tire costs. Sheesh!

Glad you got to go on an oting with your family to see a bit of history and mining. A cool field trip if you ask me. {But then again, I love learning about almost anything.}

Shaina said...

holy huge tires batman!