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Mines/United States

Sierrita mine

Sierrita mine, United States. Producing, open pit, mining copper, molybdenum since 1959.

Why Sierrita is famous

Open-pit copper and molybdenum mine near Tucson, Arizona, in operation since 1959. 2025 output 184 million lb of copper.1,2

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Porphyry copper

Sierrita today

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

Where next

Deposit types

An example ofPorphyry copperSierrita 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.