The Kennecott copper mine in Bingham Canyon is an open pit mine extracting a large copper deposit a short distance southwest of Salt Lake City.
The mine has been in production since 1906 and has resulted in the creation of a pit over one thousand, two hundred metres deep and four kilometres wide. And before they started mining here this used to be a mountain! It is quite simply the largest open pit copper mine in the world, it is visible from outer space and believe me is one mother of a big hole. It would fit Mount Snowdon quite comfortably and if you dropped Ben Nevis inside there would only be about a hundred metres left sticking out the top! That’s big!
Over its life, Bingham Canyon has proven to be one of the world’s most productive mines and since mining began ore from the mine has yielded more than seventeen million tons of copper, which is more than any other copper mine in the world.
Have Bag, Will Travel 
Oh my goodness! It’s almost incomprehensible. The photo actually gives me the sense that a whole mountain could fit there, as you say.
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I can still remember standing there and thinking the same thing!
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Did you hear about the landslide at Bingham? It was pretty impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkxBb7rp7_w
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WOW. I didn’t see that before!
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Oh, my….that is so huge it’s almost unreal
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Zowie I can’t imagine a ‘hole’ in the earth that big. I think it’s an abomination.
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Well. if we need the copper….
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I thought of that. Puts you between a rock and a hard place. Darned if you do and darned if you don’t. Sigh. Still, it feels wrong.
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We need synthetic copper
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😀 😀 I first thought of copper pipes and their replacement with PVC pipes (is that correct?) and then I thought of all the gadgets that need copper wiring. Where does it stop? Synthetic copper or a replacement? 😀
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