File:Bingham open pit copper mine, Utah - panoramio.jpg

Bingham open pit copper mine, Utah

Bingham Canyon was the first copper deposit to be excavated by large-scale open pit mining techniques. Beginning in 1906, at the suggestion of Daniel Jackling, a graduate of the Missouri School of Mines, workers began to use more efficient and profitable bulk techniques at Bingham and underground mining gradually ceased. After more than 100 years of excavation, the pit is now more than a three mi wide and a mile deep and Jackling's idea of bulk mining has spread to similar deposits throughout the world. The ores are low grade, typically less than one wt % copper, and therefore yield far waste than product. While the open pit technique is advantageous to the company, the process also produces an excessive amount of contaminated debris. Here only a small proportion of the waste resulting from excavation is seen in the lower half of the photograph which was made around 1990 long before the catastrophic 2013 landslide that closed the mine.