Bingham Copper Mine

While cruising down I-15 over the point of the mountain,

if you look West you will see this:

It's not hard to miss! These are the Bingham Copper Mines, or Kennecot Copper, the largest copper mine in the world, and the only man-made structure that can be seen from outer space.

We've never taken a tour, so we decided it was time to see for ourselves the grand scale of it all.

Here is the view from our car as we made our way up the canyon:

Once you get to the visitors center and park,
you can walk right up to the edge and look out:

See this little truck? Well it's actually larger than most houses and weighs as much as a jumbo jet! The truck driver sits two stories off the ground and will haul out around 140,000 tons of ore in a single day.
The mine is 2 3/4 miles wide and 3/4 mile deep. You can stack two Sears Towers on top of each other in the pit and still not reach the top. If you stretch out all the roads winding down into the pit, you would have 500 miles of road!

These tires are 12 feet high and cost $25,000 per tire. There are six tires on each truck! The tires only last about six months until they have to be replaced. Pricey!We had fun seeing the worlds largest producer of copper! They said in 2015 the pit will be 500 feet deeper than it is now. I think we'll schedule our next trip to the copper mines then!!