Post by Admin on Aug 9, 2024 7:42:45 GMT -7
BINGHAM CANYON:
Brigham Canyon came into being a hundred million years ago, at the end of Jurassic Time when a comet hit in the Beaufort Sea and then Northwestern Canada, plowed across British Columbia and Alberta, into Idaho and Montana, depositing copper, cobalt, silver, and gold along its trail, into Utah and Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, through Mexico and into the pacific Ocean, leaving it's wealth along the way.
Beginning of the comet path:
It was on a shallow course that dropped more rapidly than the curvature of our planet. Asteroids in the comet had already deposited Cobalt along the Idaho, Montana border, copper, silver and gold in Montana. By the time it got to Utah. it was already several thousand feet deep. the bottom of the comet just clearing valleys, the bulk smashing into mountains.
Middle of path:
Comet Path to Bingham and beyond:
The land on the Utah/Idaho border was metamorphosed, Limestone changed into marble, sandstone into quartzite, skarn changed into soapstone.
The early geologists studying Utah, found old layers of rocks shoved on top of young rocks around Sevier lake and named it the Sevier Orogeny.They traced it clear back into Canada, and noticed it was a shallow thrusting, the force coming from ground level out of the northwest.
As the thought of something coming out of the sky was forbidden at the time, their only possible source was the ocean floor being pushed under the continent, that became their villain.
Geologists have done their best to make the source of the wealth found there as coming from some really ancient source deep under ground, but the copper, silver, gold, molybdenum is obviously mixed up with rocks from the Jurassic and Triassic time periods, not more ancient.
www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/b/BINGHAM_CANYON.shtml
Bingham Canyon was settled in 1848 by the Bingham brothers, Thomas and Sanford, who were ranchers with no mining experience. In 1863, soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City explored the canyon and discovered lead ore. Utah's first mining district was created in the Bingham Canyon area that same year.
www.researchgate.net/publication/328676854_Production_history_of_the_Bingham_mining_district_Salt_Lake_County_Utah_-_an_update
The Bingham mining district is located in the northeastern Basin and Range Province of
north-central Utah, immediately southwest of Salt Lake City. Mineralization in the district is
genetically related to a small Eocene quartz monzonite porphyry stock. Lead-silver in the
district was first recognized in 1850, placer gold production began in 1864, and successful leadsilver
production followed a few years later with the arrival of the railroad. The production of
high-grade copper-gold ore started in 1897. In 1904, Utah Copper became the first flourishing
low-grade porphyry copper operation in the world using block caving, but soon switched to
large-scale open pit methods a few years later. Since the advent of open pit mining of the
porphyry copper orebody, the major advances in mining, milling, and smelting at Bingham
include the completion of a dedicated railroad to the mill (1911), recovery of sulfuric acid from
smelter gases (1917), mills converted from gravity to flotation (1921), suppression of pyrite in
the concentrator (1927), recovery of molybdenite (1936), reduction in stripping ratio (1986),
installation of an in-pit crusher and ore conveyor (1988), and construction of a new Outokumpu
smelter (1992). After nearly a century of production, the exploitation of Bingham’s
considerable lead-zinc-silver ores ended in 1971. Exploration in the 1980s discovered the
Barney Canyon and Melco sediment-hosted gold deposits that operated into the early 2000s. In
2008, Kennecott announced the discovery of an important high-grade molybdenum resource
(roughly 600 million tons at 0.1% Mo) at depth under the Bingham pit.
On April 10, 2013, two massive landslides carried about 145 million tons of waste rock
from the northeast wall into the bottom of the open pit. The Manefay slides changed the face of
the mine forever and have hampered mine production to the present day (August 2018).
Nonetheless, the operation remains profitable and the current expected mine life has been
extended to 2027.
Bingham is the most productive mining district in the U.S. and ranks as roughly the top
copper, second largest gold, third largest silver, third largest molybdenum, and fifth largest lead
producing district in the U.S. District metal production includes over 3.2 billion tons of
porphyry ore averaging approximately 0.72% Cu, 0.057% MoS2, 0.012 opt Au, and 0.09 opt
Ag; 32.8 million tons of lead-zinc-silver-gold ores with recovered grades of 6.8% Pb, 2.8% Zn,
3.65 opt Ag, and 0.041 opt Au; and an additional 30.6 million tons of 0.06 opt Au in distal
disseminated sedimentary rock-hosted gold ores. The remaining reserves and resources include
837 million tons of porphyry copper-molybdenum-gold in the open pit, an additional 400
million tons of deep high-grade copper-gold skarn ores, and a deep estimated 600-million-ton
molybdenum deposit.
Brigham Canyon came into being a hundred million years ago, at the end of Jurassic Time when a comet hit in the Beaufort Sea and then Northwestern Canada, plowed across British Columbia and Alberta, into Idaho and Montana, depositing copper, cobalt, silver, and gold along its trail, into Utah and Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, through Mexico and into the pacific Ocean, leaving it's wealth along the way.
Beginning of the comet path:
It was on a shallow course that dropped more rapidly than the curvature of our planet. Asteroids in the comet had already deposited Cobalt along the Idaho, Montana border, copper, silver and gold in Montana. By the time it got to Utah. it was already several thousand feet deep. the bottom of the comet just clearing valleys, the bulk smashing into mountains.
Middle of path:
Comet Path to Bingham and beyond:
The land on the Utah/Idaho border was metamorphosed, Limestone changed into marble, sandstone into quartzite, skarn changed into soapstone.
The early geologists studying Utah, found old layers of rocks shoved on top of young rocks around Sevier lake and named it the Sevier Orogeny.They traced it clear back into Canada, and noticed it was a shallow thrusting, the force coming from ground level out of the northwest.
As the thought of something coming out of the sky was forbidden at the time, their only possible source was the ocean floor being pushed under the continent, that became their villain.
Geologists have done their best to make the source of the wealth found there as coming from some really ancient source deep under ground, but the copper, silver, gold, molybdenum is obviously mixed up with rocks from the Jurassic and Triassic time periods, not more ancient.
www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/b/BINGHAM_CANYON.shtml
Bingham Canyon was settled in 1848 by the Bingham brothers, Thomas and Sanford, who were ranchers with no mining experience. In 1863, soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City explored the canyon and discovered lead ore. Utah's first mining district was created in the Bingham Canyon area that same year.
www.researchgate.net/publication/328676854_Production_history_of_the_Bingham_mining_district_Salt_Lake_County_Utah_-_an_update
The Bingham mining district is located in the northeastern Basin and Range Province of
north-central Utah, immediately southwest of Salt Lake City. Mineralization in the district is
genetically related to a small Eocene quartz monzonite porphyry stock. Lead-silver in the
district was first recognized in 1850, placer gold production began in 1864, and successful leadsilver
production followed a few years later with the arrival of the railroad. The production of
high-grade copper-gold ore started in 1897. In 1904, Utah Copper became the first flourishing
low-grade porphyry copper operation in the world using block caving, but soon switched to
large-scale open pit methods a few years later. Since the advent of open pit mining of the
porphyry copper orebody, the major advances in mining, milling, and smelting at Bingham
include the completion of a dedicated railroad to the mill (1911), recovery of sulfuric acid from
smelter gases (1917), mills converted from gravity to flotation (1921), suppression of pyrite in
the concentrator (1927), recovery of molybdenite (1936), reduction in stripping ratio (1986),
installation of an in-pit crusher and ore conveyor (1988), and construction of a new Outokumpu
smelter (1992). After nearly a century of production, the exploitation of Bingham’s
considerable lead-zinc-silver ores ended in 1971. Exploration in the 1980s discovered the
Barney Canyon and Melco sediment-hosted gold deposits that operated into the early 2000s. In
2008, Kennecott announced the discovery of an important high-grade molybdenum resource
(roughly 600 million tons at 0.1% Mo) at depth under the Bingham pit.
On April 10, 2013, two massive landslides carried about 145 million tons of waste rock
from the northeast wall into the bottom of the open pit. The Manefay slides changed the face of
the mine forever and have hampered mine production to the present day (August 2018).
Nonetheless, the operation remains profitable and the current expected mine life has been
extended to 2027.
Bingham is the most productive mining district in the U.S. and ranks as roughly the top
copper, second largest gold, third largest silver, third largest molybdenum, and fifth largest lead
producing district in the U.S. District metal production includes over 3.2 billion tons of
porphyry ore averaging approximately 0.72% Cu, 0.057% MoS2, 0.012 opt Au, and 0.09 opt
Ag; 32.8 million tons of lead-zinc-silver-gold ores with recovered grades of 6.8% Pb, 2.8% Zn,
3.65 opt Ag, and 0.041 opt Au; and an additional 30.6 million tons of 0.06 opt Au in distal
disseminated sedimentary rock-hosted gold ores. The remaining reserves and resources include
837 million tons of porphyry copper-molybdenum-gold in the open pit, an additional 400
million tons of deep high-grade copper-gold skarn ores, and a deep estimated 600-million-ton
molybdenum deposit.