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Mines/Canada

Copper Cliff Mine (Sudbury)

Copper Cliff Mine (Sudbury), Canada. Closed, underground, mining copper, nickel.

Why Copper Cliff Mine (Sudbury) is famous

Thomas Flanagan found ore at the Murray Mine in August 1883. In 1886 the Canadian Copper Company opened Copper Cliff, the first feasible producing mine. INCO formed in 1902 and Falconbridge in 1928, and production and workforce peaked in 1972. Coordinates blank.1,2

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 1883Copper-bearing rock found during Canadian Pacific Railway works at Sudbury3

What kind of deposit

Magmatic nickel-copper-PGE sulphide

Copper Cliff Mine (Sudbury) today

Where copper is mined todayWhere nickel is mined todayMining in Canada

Where next

People

Discovered byThomas FroodHis Sudbury deposit was one the Canadian Copper Company wanted to buy.4

Mines

Same kind of depositKambalda nickelSudbury's ore was spotted in 1883. Kambalda's nickel sulphides were found in 1966.5Same kind of depositNorilsk-Taimyr (Nornickel)Norilsk's nickel complex began in 1935. Copper Cliff opened in 1886.6

Events

Led toCopper-bearing rock found during Canadian Pacific Railway works at SudburyRead the 1883 story that unfolded near Copper Cliff Mine (Sudbury).1

Places

Located inGreater SudburyCopper Cliff Mine (Sudbury) is about 5 km from Greater Sudbury.1

Deposit types

An example ofMagmatic nickel-copper-PGE sulphideCopper Cliff Mine (Sudbury) belongs to the magmatic nickel-copper-pge sulphide family of deposits.7

Sources

  1. Sudbury mining history University of Waterloo
  2. Wikidata item Q115178132 (Copper Cliff settlement) Wikidata (CC0)
  3. Discovery Site of Sudbury Mining Camp (geotour sheet) Ontario Geological Survey / Ministry of Mines
  4. FROOD, THOMAS Dictionary of Canadian Biography
  5. Kambalda nickel history State Library of Western Australia
  6. Minerals Yearbook 2020-21, volume III: The Mineral Industry of Russia US Geological Survey
  7. 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.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Haul trucks by Lechhabmed, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Elektrisk malmletning. Undersökningar på Billiton, 1920., Okänd / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Earth Observations taken by the Expedition 15 Crew, NASA JSC (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).