Time machine · United States · 1986 to 2026

Bingham Canyon, a century-old pit still growing, 1986 to 2026

Bingham Canyon was already one of the biggest holes on Earth when the first of these pictures was taken: mined since 1903, the first large open-pit copper mine in the United States. Slide forward and the pit keeps widening, the waste dumps climb the Oquirrh Mountains, and in 2013 the north-east wall slides into the bottom.

Bingham Canyon pit

2 km

2025Sentinel-2C · 30 Jul 2026

Worked ground Copper output

Ground worked by the mine by this yearNewly worked since the frame beforeMilestones on the timeline

Forty years, frame by frame

One clear picture every five years, all on one grid, 17 km across. Pick a frame to open the viewer on it, drag the timeline, or press Play. Compare puts any two years side by side under a divider you drag.

1985 · 17 Jul 1986
Landsat 5 · 16.5 km² worked

1990 · 15 Jul 1991
Landsat 5 · 17.1 km² worked

1995 · 26 Jul 1995
Landsat 5 · 18.2 km² worked

2000 · 31 Jul 2000
Landsat 7 · 20.0 km² worked

2005 · 5 Jul 2005
Landsat 5 · 20.6 km² worked

2010 · 22 Jul 2011
Landsat 5 · 22.0 km² worked

2015 · 14 Jul 2014
Landsat 8 · 23.7 km² worked

2020 · 31 Jul 2020
Sentinel-2A · 32.9 km² worked

2025 · 30 Jul 2026
Sentinel-2C · 33.7 km² worked

What happened here

1863 The first claims. Wikidata records 1863 as the start of mining at Bingham Canyon. [1]
1903 The open pit begins. Daniel Jackling proved 50 million tons of ore grading 1.93 per cent copper, and Bingham became the first large open-pit mine and concentrator in the United States. It has been mined and processed since 1903. [2][3]
2013 The Manefay slides. On 10 April 2013 two landslides carried about 145 Mt of waste rock into the bottom of the pit. The Utah Geological Survey calls them the largest mining-induced landslides in history. No one was hurt. [4]
2025 133.6 kt of copper. Rio Tinto reports 133.6 kt of refined copper from Kennecott in 2025, down from 193 kt in 2024. [5]

More on the mine's history is on Bingham Canyon in the history of mining, and on the copper and molybdenum pages and mining in United States.

Copper output by year

Copper output from Bingham Canyon in the years with an open, mine-level figure: the Jasansky et al. open database of mine production (CC BY 4.0) and the operators' own filings. Years with no open mine-level figure are left out rather than estimated. The timeline under the pictures shows the same bars.

The figures

Year	Output	Basis	Source
2001	313 kt	contained copper	[6]
2002	260 kt	contained copper	[6]
2003	282 kt	contained copper	[6]
2004	264 kt	contained copper	[6]
2005	221 kt	contained copper	[6]
2006	266 kt	contained copper	[6]
2007	212 kt	contained copper	[6]
2008	238 kt	contained copper	[6]
2009	304 kt	contained copper	[6]
2010	250 kt	contained copper	[6]
2011	195 kt	contained copper	[6]
2012	163 kt	contained copper	[6]
2013	211 kt	contained copper	[6]
2014	204 kt	contained copper	[6]
2015	92.0 kt	contained copper	[6]
2016	153 kt	contained copper	[6]
2017	149 kt	contained copper	[6]
2018	204 kt	contained copper	[6]
2024	193 kt	refined copper, Kennecott	[5]
2025	134 kt	refined copper, Kennecott	[5]

Photos

Pictures from the ground and from orbit, openly licensed. The viewer slips each one in near its year.

How this was made

Pictures. Landsat 4 and 5 (to 2011), Landsat 7 (before its 2003 scan-line fault), Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 (2017 on), surface reflectance read from Microsoft's Planetary Computer. For each frame we take the clearest picture within a year or so of the target year, in the same season where we can, checked against each scene's own cloud mask, and cut it to one grid. One colour stretch serves every frame, and each older frame is colour-matched to the newest over the whole picture, so a change in colour is mostly a change on the ground. Landsat pixels are 30 m and Sentinel-2 pixels 10 m, so the newest frames are sharper. The date of each picture shows under the year.

Worked ground is our own estimate from the pictures. Within a box drawn round the mine, leaving the towns out, a 30 m cell counts as worked once it has lost its vegetation or changed strongly in brightness and short-wave infrared against the first frame, and the next frame sees the same change. Ground stays worked once it is worked, small specks are dropped, and holes inside the footprint are filled. It traces pits, waste dumps, tailings and plant, but it can miss ground that looks like its surroundings and catch a road or a cleared paddock. Treat the areas as a guide, not a survey. The newest frame is from July 2026: the clearest summer picture near 2025. The pit was already large in 1986, so the outline starts with the ground worked by then.

Output and milestones. Each figure and fact is linked to its source below. We report what operators and governments published and do not estimate missing years.

Sources and credits

Satellite pictures: USGS/NASA Landsat (public domain) and contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-2 data 2026, via Microsoft Planetary Computer, processed by Prospector Trails. Photos: Bingham, 1942: Andreas Feininger (1906–1999), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain; Bingham, 2012: David Ratledge, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0; Waste dumps, 2019: Farragutful, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not investment advice.