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Mines/United States

Bingham Canyon mine

Bingham Canyon mine, United States. Producing, mining copper, silver, gold, molybdenum since 1903.

Why Bingham Canyon is famous

Kennecott's Bingham Canyon mine near Salt Lake City, Utah, has been mined and processed since 1903. Rio Tinto operates it and reports 133.6 kt of refined copper for Kennecott in 2025 (193 kt in 2024).1,2,3

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 1995RTZ and CRA form a dual listed group5
  2. 2013Manefay landslides at Bingham Canyon4

What kind of deposit

Porphyry copper

Bingham Canyon today

Where copper is mined todayWhere silver is mined todayWhere gold is mined todayWhere molybdenum is mined todayMining in United States

Where next

People

Financed bySpencer PenroseHe backed the bulk mining idea that made a mountain of poor copper pay.6Founded byDaniel C. JacklingHe proved 50 million tons of poor copper ore could pay.7Investigated byJoseph R. De LamarHe turned down Bingham, but his report started its story.8

Mines

Same kind of depositEscondidaBingham has been mined since 1903. Escondida was found in 1981 and made 1,261 kt in a year.1Same kind of depositChuquicamataTwo early open pits: Bingham from 1903 and Chuquicamata from 1915, run by the Guggenheims.1

Events

Owned byRTZ and CRA form a dual listed groupRio Tinto operates Bingham Canyon and reported 133.6 kt of refined copper for Kennecott in 2025.1Led toManefay landslides at Bingham CanyonRead what happened near Bingham Canyon: Manefay landslides at Bingham Canyon.1

Places

Worked herePark CityBingham Canyon lies about 57 km away.9

Deposit types

An example ofPorphyry copperA working example of the porphyry copper type.10

Sources

  1. Kennecott operation page Rio Tinto
  2. Form 20-F for the year ended 31 December 2025 Rio Tinto (SEC)
  3. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  4. Bingham Canyon's Manefay Landslides and the Future of the Mine Utah Geological Survey
  5. History of Rio Tinto
  6. Spencer Penrose Colorado Encyclopedia
  7. Hall of Fame: Daniel Jackling Mining Foundation of the Southwest
  8. 2023 Inductees from Mining's Past Mining Foundation of the Southwest
  9. Wikidata item Q482993 (Park City)
  10. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

Keep exploring

Stories with these minerals

Time machineBingham Canyon from spaceMined since 1903 and still widening.Lessons from historyThe deposits that made fortunes, and who kept them1485-2008Lessons from historyLucky breaks: the finds that almost did not happen1623-2009A Caterpillar 797 haul truck with a worker standing beside a front tyre that is more than twice his heightEquipmentHaul trucksHauling · Open-pit mines

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Haul trucks by Lechhabmed, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Kimberley, South Africa: miners and washing gear at the Bultfontein diamond mine. Woodburytype, 1888, after a photograph by Robert Harris., Harris, Robert, active 1881-1888. (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0).