LUDB: Mining

Anaconda Mine and Smelting Works

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Anaconda was a heavy mining and mineral processing town, with several industrial complexes, now closed down after the mining ceased around 1980. Some of the mine is part of the nation's largest Superfund Site, and a Jack Nicklaus-designed 18-hole golf course has recently been built incorporating some of the industrial remains into the course. There are plans to continue to develop much of the area as a tourist attraction, perhaps even a National Park. ARCO owns all of the Anaconda Company's holdings in the area now, including much of the 120 mile long Superfund toxic site, extending down the Clark River drainage area, which is contaminated with arsenic and heavy metals. The 585-foot-tall smelter stack, all that remains of the Anaconda Reduction Works, is "one of the highest free-standing brick structures in the world." Built in 1919, it was left as a lonely remainder of a once vast industrial complex, and it sits in a 12 acre State Park, which is not open to the public.

Argo Gold Mill

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Now a national historic site, this mill operated from 1913 to 1943, processing ore brought via the 22,000 foot Argo Tunnel. At the time it was built, it was the largest mill of its type in the world. It is now a tourist attraction.

Asarco Copper Smelter

Sat, 19 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

One of two copper smelters owned by Asarco (the other is in Hayden, Arizona, closer to the company's mines in Arizona), El Paso has a 828-foot-tall stack, at this 123-acre plant site. When operating at full capacity the plant employs over 400 people. Phelps Dodge also operates a copper refinery in El Paso.

Asarco Mission Mine

Sun, 27 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

One of the largest mining operations in the United States, the Mission Complex is a copper and silver mining network, with an underground mine and two open pits: the Mission pit, and the smaller, adjacent San Xavier North pit. The mine is operated by Asarco (which was purchased by Mexico's largest mining company Grupo Mexico in 1999) producing around 100,000 tons of ore a year, with an expected 510 million tons remaining. The main pit is 2.5 by 1.5 miles, and 1,000 feet deep. In 2000, Mission was the third largest copper mine in Arizona, the state that produces 65% of the nation's raw copper.

Berkeley Pit

Sun, 14 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Large open pit copper mine with over 17 billion gallons of wastewater contaminated from mining operations. The pit and much of the surrounding mines and smelting areas, including the Anaconda area and the 120-mile long Clark Fork River drainage area, have been designated as an EPA Superfund toxic site. The mine, which ceased operations in 1982, once employed thousands of people. Now the pit supports a growing industry of remediation technologies and clean-up personnel.

Big Brutus Coal Scoop

Sun, 30 Dec 2001 00:00:00 GMT

The second largest electric-powered shovel in the world, now a museum. The 15-story coal scoop, which could be moved at a rate of 1/5 mile per hour on its set of eight tank treads, scooped the overburden off a seam of coal in a mine near Hallowell, Kansas, from 1963 to 1974. The mine, now reclaimed, its pits filled with water and stocked with fish, is adjacent to where Big Brutus sits today. The machine was retired largely due to the cost of operating it: the electric bill from its last month of operation was $27,000.

Big Muskie Coal Scoop Bucket

Sun, 13 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The electric shovel that operated at this coal mine was the largest mobile land machine in the world. It used as much electricity as 27,500 homes to scoop out 325 tons of material in each bite (220 cubic yards). Built in 1969 it required a crew of seven to operate it. In 1999, the massive machine and its dragline were destroyed and salvaged, as the mine was shut down. Only the huge bucket was preserved for posterity, and tourists.

Bingham Copper Pit

Mon, 21 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

This active mine is the second biggest open pit copper mine in the world, slightly smaller than the Chuquicamata pit in Chile. Digging started in 1904, and the hole is now half a mile deep and more than two miles wide. It is expected to be enlarged until the ore runs out sometime after the year 2020. Owned and operated by Kennecott Copper Company, which employs 2,400 people at the site and the nearby smelter. On the National Register of Historic Places.

Black Mesa Coal Mine and Pipeline

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A coal mine where the coal is extracted and pulverized and mixed with water to form a slurry which is then transported through a pipeline for 273 miles to the Mojave Generating Station, a power plant in Laughlin, Nevada. The 18-inch diameter pipe is currently the longest coal-slurry pipeline in operation in the country. The process uses a billion gallons of water a year, and towns as far as 50 miles away are noticing a substantial loss of groundwater. The mine is operated by the British-owned Peabody Western Coal Company, and the pipeline is owned by Southern Pacific. Other coal slurry pipelines are under development, including the 1,400 mile Energy Transportation System Inc. line that will bring coal from Wyoming to Louisiana.

Black Mesa Coal Silo

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Two coal mines in the nearby hills serve distant power plants. This silo is at the end of a 17-mile-long conveyor connecting to the Kayenta Mine on Black Mesa. From here it is loaded on to electric trains that take it 75 miles on a dedicated track to the Navajo Power Plant near Page. Power from that plant serves Los Angeles and Phoenix. The other mine on Black Mesa is the origin of the Black Mesa Pipeline which travels 273 miles across the desert to the Mohave Power Plant in Nevada.

Black Thunder Coal Mine

Sat, 2 Feb 2002 00:00:00 GMT

One of the largest coal mines in the USA, Black Thunder extracted 31.6 million short tons from its open pit in 1994, and nearly 60 million tons in 2000. Operated by Arch Coal, which bought out ARCO's Thunder Basin Coal Company in 1998. One of several major mining operations extracting coal from a 50-mile-long seam in the Powder River Basin area, one of the largest coal deposits in the world.

Bodie State Historic Park

Sun, 27 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A remote gold mining ghost town, north of Mono Lake, designated a state historic park in 1962. In its heyday, in 1879, it had a population of 10,000 and many of the original buildings remain, preserved in a state of "arrested decay". A sprawling ruin, in a remarkable landscape, that is only partially restored.

Boyer Smelter Site

Fri, 28 Dec 2001 00:00:00 GMT

A large, now closed-down smelter for lead and zinc mining operations in the Coeur d'Alene region, called Bunker Hill, which is now one of the nation's largest Superfund toxic clean-up sites. Two large stacks at the smelter, one 715-feet high, were demolished in 1996, and the rest of the operation, which employed 2,100 people once, closed in the early 1980's. The company that owned most of the smelter, Gulf Resources, went bankrupt, largely due to suits for negligence that allowed excessive emissions from the smelter's stacks to further contaminate the area. Lake Couer d'Alene, downstream from the smelter, received much of the runoff from the operation, and has a toxic sediment 18-inches thick. The smelter site is being cleaned up, and over 200 buildings have been removed since 1995.

Bristol Dry Lake

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Salt has been extracted from the dry lake bed since 1909, and continues to be mined today. The surface layer on much of the lake, which is three to seven feet thick, is removed in order to get at the salt, and is dumped in long rows of conical piles along the trenches. The Cargill Salt Company, the second largest salt producer in the country, is one of two companies operating on the lake, producing sodium chloride and calcium chloride for industrial use and food products.

Burro Schmidt Tunnel

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

This 2,000-foot long tunnel, approximately seven feet in diameter, was chiseled through a mountain by William Henry Schmidt with hand tools and explosives. Begun in 1906 as a means of transporting ore from his mine to the processing site, Schmidt devoted the following 32 years of his life to digging the tunnel, apparently losing interest in his mining enterprise, until he broke through the mountainside on the other end.

Calico Ghost Town Park

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Calico Ghost Town is a ghost town theme park, built out of the fairly extensive remains of an old silver mining town. Walter Knott, founder of the Knotts Berry Farm theme park, restored the ghost town, after taking much of it to Orange County, where he used it to begin the theme park. The Regional Parks Department of San Bernardino County now manages the site, which is a popular tour bus stop. There are 23 shops along the town's old main street, selling souvenirs and candy. Gunfighter performances are occasionally scheduled, and a brief mini train ride takes you on a loop through the fringe of the townsite. At least one of the old mining tunnels is open to the public, with talking miner figures activated by motion sensors - just a fraction of the 30 miles of tunnels around Calico, on 14 levels underground.

California Portland Cement Company's Mojave Plant

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The California Portland Cement Company's Mojave Plant employs 150 people to extract limestone and produce cement at this 9,000 acre site. The plant opened in 1955, after a nine mile rail spur connecting the site to the main line at Mojave was built by the company. The plant has been expanded and modernized a number of times, most recently in the early 1980's. It is one of three locations for this company: the others are at Rillito, Arizona, and at Colton, California (where a literal mountain of limestone can be observed slowly disappearing, on the south side of Interstate 10). Cement from the Mojave facility was used to build the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown L.A., Dodger's Stadium, and the second L.A. Aqueduct.

Cargill Salt

Fri, 18 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The salt operations at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay are the largest, in area, in the country. Cargill (a privately held industrial conglomerate with 85,000 employees worldwide) owns all the salt operations on the bay, having bought the bay area's main salt producer, Leslie Salt, in 1978. Salt brine is shifted from pond to pond over a five year period, through a system of 40,000 acres of ponds, until it is saline enough that it grows as a crystal from the bottom of the crystallizing ponds (the ponds are often a deep red color because of an algae that grows naturally). It is then scooped up from the bottom of these ponds and is washed, ground, and packaged. Though Cargill owns the ponds and does the harvesting, some of the raw salt is sold and packaged by Morton Salt, which has a refinery adjacent to Cargill's. Morton and Cargill are also neighbors at the Great Salt Lake in Utah, another major salt production site. Outside the Southwest (where salt water can be evaporated) salt is generally obtained from salt mines, in Kansas, Louisiana, New York, and elsewhere.

Carlin Mine Complex

Thu, 10 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

This mine complex is among the largest in the state, employing over 1,600 people in 2000. Nearly 2 million ounces of gold is extracted here annually, valued at over $600 million. Its is one of three large mines in the state operated by the Newmont Mining Company, one of the pioneer mining companies in the modern Carlin Trend gold boom, a geographic region in northern Nevada that produces the majority of gold in Nevada, the state that produces around 75% of the gold mined in the USA. Newmont employs almost 4,000 workers in the state and controls over 3,000 square miles of land in the state.

Concrete, Town of

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The town of Concrete in the foothills of the northern Cascades once housed the largest concrete plants in the state. Nearly half of the concrete for the Grand Coulee Dam (the largest concrete structure in the world) came from here, as well as material for other Washington dam projects. The last plant closed in 1968, and monumental remnants of the industry can be found in town, and in the woods on the edges of town.

Cordero Rojo Mine Complex

Sat, 2 Feb 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The Cordero and Caballo Rojo mines were merged in 1997 to create one of the largest and most productive coal mines in the United States. Rio Tinto Energy America operates the mine and controls 6,500 acres of Bureau of Land Management land that contain around 350 million more tons of coal. Extracted at the current rate of 30 million tons per year.

Cornelia Tailings

Sun, 27 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

One of the largest mine tailings piles in the world: 7.4 billion cubic feet, the New Cornelia Tailings is often cited as the largest dam structure in the country, by volume (the tailings, waste material from the mining process, were heaped into a pile that created a holding structure for future tailings, some of which were deposited in a pumped slurry, thus the tailings pile is an "impoundment" or dam). The mine that produced the tailings, the 1.5 mile wide open pit New Cornelia Mine, is owned by Phelps Dodge, and is presently in limbo (shut down in 1983). A project to mine the tailings has been proposed.

Eagle Mountain Mine

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A shut-down Kaiser iron mine, that once provided ore to Kaiser's Fontana steel works. A suburban-looking development, with over 100 houses built to house mine workers and their families, is virtually abandoned, making Eagle Mountain one of the more recently-formed ghost towns. There is also a minimum security prison occupying some of the town's structures. The Eagle Mountain mine is one of three sites being considered for a "megafill" landfill site for Los Angeles (the others are the Mesquite Regional Landfill, near Glamis, and Bristol Dry Lake, near Amboy).

Earth Angel Radon Mine

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

One of six radon health mines in this part of Montana, which apparently are the only active radon health mines in the United States. The Earth Angel, a former gold mine, has the strongest concentration of radon gas, limiting users to 20 visits at a stretch (instead of the usual 30). Halfway down the 600-foot-long tunnel, a fork leads to a narrow, dry chamber, with a few chairs. The main tunnel, paved with concrete, extends further, and has a small stream of water running alongside the walkway. At the end is a chest high dam with a grate on top, opening onto a reservoir - a dark, linear pool of water, plunging deep into the mountain. No decorations at all in this mine.

Eckley Miner's Village

Wed, 16 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

An inactive and well preserved coal mining town, with a museum to the industry located at the site. Part of the well-preserved look is due to the fact that many of the mining buildings were constructed as part of the set of the The Molly Maguires, a 1970 film about a labor-management dispute, starring Richard Harris and Sean Connery.

El Paso Copper Refinery

Sat, 19 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The Phelps Dodge Mining Company's refinery in El Paso is one of the world's largest refineries of electrolytic copper. At this plant, which employs about 280 people, the copper is refined and formed into a continuous-cast rod, which can then be turned into electric wire and cable.

Empire Iron Mine

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Upper peninsula iron ore mine that has the capacity to produce eight million tons of iron ore pellets annually, one of the largest producers in the world. The operation is managed by the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, which co-owns it with a number of large steel companies, as the ore pellet is used by the steel industry to produce steel. The operation employs over 1,000 people.

Erosion and Sedimentation Plan for Red Ash and Coal Silt Area

Wed, 16 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

In 1985 Harriet Feigenbaum planted three circles of willow trees around a pond formed from coal dust runoff in this strip mining site. Currently maintained as a wetland wildlife preserve, this project symbolizes Feigenbaum's commitment to creating a harmonium between industry and nature. Current reports indicate the site is unkept.

Fish Creek Mine

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

One of the largest gypsum mines in the United States. At one point as much as 10% of the Nation's gypsum was extracted from this site, which is owned by the U.S. Gypsum company. The mining complex is connected to the Plaster City plant by a 20-mile long narrow gauge rail line.

FMC Trona Mine

Sat, 2 Feb 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The FMC mine is the largest trona mine in the world, with 2,000 miles of tunnels, most of which are 14 feet wide and 8 feet tall. It extracts as much as 900 tons an hour. It is one of several mines working the vast layer of trona that lies beneath the surface in the region. Trona is a soft, soda ash-like material, left by an ancient dry lake bed. It is used in glass, detergents, and metals.