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Mines/United States

Morenci mine

Morenci mine, United States. Producing, open pit, mining copper, molybdenum since 1939.

Why Morenci is famous

Open-pit copper and molybdenum complex in Arizona in continuous operation since 1939, after earlier underground mining from the 1880s. Freeport owns 72%. Its share of 2025 copper was 497 million lb (about 225 kt).1,2

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Porphyry copper

Morenci today

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

Where next

Mines

ExamplesSaffordArizona open-pit copper: Safford's Lone Star deposit made 287 million lb in 2025.1ExamplesChinoOpen-pit copper in the Southwest: Chino in New Mexico, Morenci in Arizona.1

Deposit types

An example ofPorphyry copperMorenci belongs to the porphyry copper family of deposits.3

Sources

  1. Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 Freeport-McMoRan Inc (SEC)
  2. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  3. 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: Chuquicamata from the ISS by Alexander Gerst (ESA), CC BY-SA 2.0.