page_title: Bingham Canyon Mine
section_title: Geology
hierarchical_section_title: Bingham Canyon Mine / Geology
caption_attribution_description: English: Sketch geologic map of the Bingham Canyon copper deposit, Utah, USA, showing bedrock type and alteration zones
context_page_description: 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, and deepest open-pit mine in the world, which 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 0.75 miles deep, 2.5 miles 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.
context_section_description: The Bingham Canyon ore deposits occur in the Bingham nappe.  They are a porphyry copper deposit, formed by a quartz monzonite porphyry intruded into sedimentary rocks.  They exhibit a concentric alteration pattern and mineralogic zonation around the Bingham stock.  These zones include a central core containing magnetite, followed by "a molybdenite zone low in copper, a bornite-chalcopyrite-gold higher grade copper zone, a pyrite-chalcopyrite zone, a pyrite zone, and an outermost lead-zinc zone."
  Structurally, Late Paleozoic rocks were thrust faulted over the Precambrian craton during the Cretaceous Sevier orogeny.  These rocks were later intruded and altered in the Tertiary by granitoid rocks.  This igneous event was the source of deposition of gold, silver and other base metals.
  Copper and molybdenum sulfide minerals are dispersed in the intruded stock and in the adjoining carbonate sedimentary skarns. The main stratigraphic rocks in Bingham Canyon are Upper Pennsylvanian sandstones, quartzites, and limestones known as the Bingham Mine Formation in the Oquirrh Group.  The central porphyry ores formed from mantle hydrothermal circulation while the outer vein and deposits in the sedimentary rocks formed at lower temperature when magmatic and meteoric waters mixed.
caption: Geologic map showing bedrock geology and alteration zones, USGS.
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