Located near Salt Lake City, Utah, US, Bingham Canyon celebrated its 100th anniversary in June 2003. The Bingham Canyon mine, Copperton concentrator and Garfield smelter comprise one of the largest and most up-to-date integrated copper operations in the world: major investments during the past 15 years have ensured economically and environmentally sound operation. Cumulative copper output is now about 17Mt, more than any other mine.
Bingham Canyon Mine, located near Salt Lake City, is the world's deepest man-made open pit excavation. The mine is 2.75 miles (4,5km) across and 0.75 mile (1,2km) deep. Since mining operations started in 1906, Bingham Canyon Mine has been the granddaddy of all copper mines. When you're talking about the actual size of the mine, Bingham Canyon is simply the largest copper mine in the USA. If the mine was a stadium, it could seat nine million people.
Bingham Canyon is primarily a copper mine, but it has also yielded a wide range of byproduct metals. These include 620 tons of gold, 5,000 tons of silver, 276 tons of molybdenum and large amounts of platinum and palladium. The Kennecott mining company extracts daily approximately 450,000 tons of rock out of the mine. With these production statistics, it's no wonder that the Bingham Canyon Mine has been nicknamed "the Richest Hole on Earth." The value of metals produced yearly at Bingham Canyon is US$1.8 billion dollars.