 | Parts of this article (those related to leading mines) need to be updated.(January 2007) |
The following lists of copper mines in the United States:
| Parts of this article (those related to leading mines) need to be updated.(January 2007) |
The following lists of copper mines in the United States:
Leading copper-producing mines in the U.S. in 2005, in order of output: [1] The mines on this list accounted for more than 99% of U.S. mine production in 2005.
| Rank | Mine | County and State | Operator | Source of copper | Capacity (thousands of metric tons) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Morenci | Greenlee County, Arizona | Freeport-McMoRan | Copper ore, leached | 390 |
| 2 | Bingham Canyon | Salt Lake County, Utah | Rio Tinto: Kennecott Utah Copper Corp.(wholly owned subsidiary) | Copper-molybdenum ore, concentrated | 300 |
| 3 | Ray | Pinal County, Arizona | ASARCO | Copper ore, concentrated and leached | 170 |
| 4 | Bagdad | Yavapai County, Arizona | Freeport-McMoRan | Copper-molybdenum ore, concentrated and leached | 100 |
| 5 | El Chino | Grant County, New Mexico | Freeport-McMoRan | Copper-molybdenum ore, concentrated and leached | 125 |
| 6 | Sierrita | Pima County, Arizona | Freeport-McMoRan | Copper-molybdenum ore, concentrated and leached | 100 |
| 7 | Tyrone | Grant County, New Mexico | Freeport-McMoRan | Copper ore, leached | 80 |
| 8 | Continental Pit | Silver Bow County, Montana | Montana Resources LLP | Copper-molybdenum ore, concentrated | 45 |
| 9 | Mission Complex | Pima County, Arizona | ASARCO | Copper ore, concentrated | 70 |
| 10 | Silver Bell | Pima County, Arizona | ASARCO | Copper ore, leached | 22 |
| 11 | Robinson | White Pine County, Nevada | Quadra FNX Mining | Copper-molybdenum ore, concentrated | 60 |
| 12 | Miami | Gila County, Arizona | Freeport-McMoRan | Copper ore, leached | 50 |
| 13 | Pinto Valley | Gila County, Arizona | BHP Copper | Copper ore, leached | 5 |
| 14 | Miami | Gila County, Arizona | BHP Copper | Copper ore, leached | 5 |
| Mine | County and State | Operator | Type of Deposit | Annual Capacity (metric tons) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lisbon Valley | San Juan County, Utah | Constellation Copper | Sandstone | 9100 [2] |
| Safford | Graham County, Arizona | Freeport-McMoRan | Porphyry copper | Production began December 26, 2007 [3] |
| Mineral Park | Mohave County, Arizona | Mercator Minerals | 4900 [4] | |
| Tohono | Pinal County, Arizona | Freeport-McMoRan | 1360 [5] | |
| Johnson Camp | Cochise County, Arizona | Nord Resources | Began production January 2008 [4] | |
| Carlota | Pinal County, Arizona | Quadra FNX Mining Ltd. | Started mining in 2nd half of 2008 [4] |
| Mine | County (Borough) and State | Operator | Type of Deposit | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pebble | Lake and Peninsula Borough, Alaska | Pebble Mines Corp. | Porphyry copper | Planning |
| Rosemont | Pima County, Arizona | Hudbay Minerals | Porphyry Skarn | Plan of operations filed with US Forest Service [6] |
| Resolution Copper | Pinal County, Arizona | Rio Tinto Group 55% and BHP Billiton 45% | Operation stalled pending proposed land swap with federal government [4] | |
| Eagle Project | Marquette County, Michigan | Rio Tinto | State mining permit approved December 2007 | |
| Northmet | St. Louis County, Minnesota | Polymet Mining | Copper-Nickel-Platinum | State and federal permits applied for an open-pit mine [7] |
| Rocky-Beaver Lake | Beaver County, Utah | Copper King Mining | Porphyry | Expected to start production in 2008 [8] |
There are hundreds of inactive or defunct copper mines in the United States. The list below includes only those with Wikipedia articles.
BHP, formerly known as BHP Billiton, is the trading entity of BHP Group Limited and BHP Group plc, an Anglo-Australian multinational mining, metals and petroleum dual-listed public company headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Bechtel Corporation ) is an engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company headquartered in Reston, Virginia. It is the largest construction company in the United States and the 11th-largest privately owned American company in 2018.
The Keweenaw Peninsula is the northernmost part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It projects into Lake Superior and was the site of the first copper boom in the United States. As of the 2000 census, its population was roughly 43,200. Its major industries are now logging and tourism, as well as jobs related to Michigan Technological University and Finlandia University.
The Copper Country is an area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States, including all of Keweenaw County, Michigan and most of Houghton, Baraga and Ontonagon counties as well as part of Marquette County. The area is so named as copper mining was prevalent there from 1845 until the late 1960s, with one mine continuing through 1995. In its heyday, the area was the world's greatest producer of copper.
Phelps Dodge Corporation was an American mining company founded in 1834 as an import-export firm by Anson Greene Phelps and his two sons-in-law William Earle Dodge, Sr. and Daniel James. The latter two ran Phelp, James & Co., the part of the organization based in Liverpool, England. The import-export firm at first exported United States cotton from the Deep South to England, and imported various metals to the US needed for industrialization. With the expansion of the western frontier in North America, the corporation acquired mines and mining companies, including the Copper Queen Mine in Arizona and the Dawson, New Mexico coal mines. It operated its own mines and acquired railroads to carry its products. By the late 19th century, it was known as a mining company.
Rio Tinto is an Anglo-Australian multinational and one of the world's largest metals and mining corporations. The company was founded in 1873, when a multinational consortium of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto, in Huelva, Spain, from the Spanish government. Since then, the company has grown through a long series of mergers and acquisitions to place itself among the world leaders in the production of many commodities, including aluminium, iron ore, copper, uranium, and diamonds. Although primarily focused on extraction of minerals, Rio Tinto also has significant operations in refining, particularly for refining bauxite and iron ore. The company has operations on six continents, but is mainly concentrated in Australia and Canada, and owns its mining operations through a complex web of wholly and partly owned subsidiaries. Rio Tinto has joint head offices in London and Melbourne.
The Bingham Canyon Mine, more commonly known as Kennecott Copper Mine among locals, is an open-pit mining operation extracting a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, in the Oquirrh Mountains. The mine is the largest man-made excavation in the world and is considered to have produced more copper than any other mine in history – more than 19 million tons. The mine is owned by Rio Tinto Group, a British-Australian multinational corporation. The copper operations at Bingham Canyon Mine are managed through Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation which operates the mine, a concentrator plant, a smelter, and a refinery. The mine has been in production since 1906, and has resulted in the creation of a pit over 0.6 miles (970 m) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 under the name Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine. The mine experienced a massive landslide in April 2013 and a smaller slide in September 2013.
Copper mining in the United States has been a major industry since the rise of the northern Michigan copper district in the 1840s. In 2017 the United States produced 1.27 million metric tonnes of copper, worth $8 billion, making it the world's fourth largest copper producer, after Chile, China, and Peru. Copper was produced from 23 mines in the US. Top copper producing states in 2014 were Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana. Minor production also came from Idaho, and Missouri. As of 2014, the US had 45 million tonnes of known remaining reserves of copper, the fifth largest known copper reserves in the world, after Chile, Australia, Peru, and Mexico.
Gold mining in the United States has taken place continually since the discovery of gold at the Reed farm in North Carolina in 1799. The first documented occurrence of gold was in Virginia in 1782. Some minor gold production took place in North Carolina as early as 1793, but created no excitement. The discovery on the Reed farm in 1799 which was identified as gold in 1802 and subsequently mined marked the first commercial production.
Uranium mining in Colorado, United States, goes back to 1872, when pitchblende ore was taken from gold mines near Central City, Colorado. The Colorado uranium industry has seen booms and busts, but continues to this day. Not counting byproduct uranium from phosphate, Colorado is considered to have the third largest uranium reserves of any US state, behind Wyoming and New Mexico.
While it originated thousands of years earlier, copper mining in Michigan became an important industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its rise marked the start of copper mining as a major industry in the United States.
Copper mining in Arizona, a state of the United States, has been a major industry since the 19th century. In 2007 Arizona was the leading copper-producing state in the US, producing 750 thousand metric tons of copper, worth a record $5.54 billion. Arizona's copper production was 60% of the total for the United States. Copper mining also produces gold and silver as byproducts. Byproduct molybdenum from copper mining makes Arizona the nation's second-largest producer of that metal. Although copper mineralization was found by the earliest Spanish explorers of Arizona, the territory was remote, and copper could seldom be profitably mined and shipped. Early Spanish, Mexican, and American prospectors searched for gold and silver, and ignored copper. It was not until the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1876 that copper became broadly economic to mine and ship to market.
In-situ leaching (ISL), also called in-situ recovery (ISR) or solution mining, is a mining process used to recover minerals such as copper and uranium through boreholes drilled into a deposit, in situ. In situ leach works by artificially dissolving minerals occurring naturally in a solid state. For recovery of material occurring naturally in solution, see: Brine mining.
Resolution Copper (RCM) is a joint venture owned by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton formed to develop and operate an underground copper mine near Superior, Arizona, U.S. The project targets a deep-seated porphyry copper deposit located under the now inactive Magma Mine. Rio Tinto has reported an inferred resource of 1.624 billion tonnes containing 1.47 percent copper and 0.037 percent molybdenum at depths exceeding 1,300 metres (0.81 mi). The proposed mine is one of the largest copper resources in North America. Following the passage of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, many Native American and conservation groups fear the copper mine will destroy sacred and environmentally sensitive land.
Helvetia is a populated place in Pima County, Arizona, that was settled in 1891 and abandoned in the early 1920s. Helvetia is an ancient name for Switzerland.
Mining in the United States has been active since colonial times, but became a major industry in the 19th century with a number of new mineral discoveries causing a series of mining "rushes." In 2015, the value of coal, metals, and industrial minerals mined in the United States was US $109.6 billion. 158,000 workers were directly employed by the mining industry.
Rosemont Copper is the name of a proposed new and large open pit copper mine project pursued by the Canadian mining corporation Hudbay Minerals. It is in a permitting review process under the direction of the United States Forest Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The project site is located within the Santa Rita Mountains and Coronado National Forest, in Pima County of southern Arizona.
The Skouries mine is a high-grade gold-copper porphyry deposit located in the Halkidiki Peninsula in northern Greece. It is currently under development by Eldorado Gold and is planned to be an open pit and underground mine. Production is targeted in 2019.
Spokane is a ghost town located in Custer County, South Dakota, United States. It was a mining camp in the Black Hills.
Tanzania is a land rich in minerals. Mining makes up more than 50% of the country’s total exports, of which a large part comes from gold. The country has gold reserves of 45 million ounces, generating revenue of over a billion USD. Diamonds are also found in significant amounts. Since it was opened in 1940, the Williamson diamond mine has produced 19 million carats of diamonds. Gemstones, nickel, copper, uranium, kaolin, titanium, cobalt and platinum are also mined in Tanzania. Illegal mining and corruption are ongoing problems. In 2017, the government passed a series of bills aimed at increasing revenue from minerals after a scandal which caused the dismissal of the Minister for Energy and Minerals.