Utah Trip Day 6

Today we went out to the Kennecot Bingham Copper Mine. This is near West Jordan, Utah. This mine is the largest open pit mine in the world and is the only man made thing you can see from the space shuttle. The mine is 2.5 miles wide and .75 miles deep. It is HUGE. Visiting this mine and going on a tour there was one of the requirements for Grant's Citizenship in the Nation Merit Badge. The requirement was to visit a national landmark. So we figured while we were in Utah, this would be an easy one to check out.

If you look to the left on this picture, there are some tiny blue port-a-potties. That should give you some perspective of how HUGE the truck is parked next to it.

The best way to view the copper mine is through binoculars.
Grant is checking all of the machinery out down in the pit.

In the center of this picture to the right side is a building in the mine. The dumptrucks bring their loads to this "building" and dump it in. The machine inside crushes the rocks so they are no larger than 10 inches. Then they send the crushed material onto a conveyor belt 5 miles to the next spot that processes the rock.

Mitchell and Grant are standing in front of one of the dump truck tires. Each dump truck has 6 of these. Each one costs $25,000 and needs to be replaced every year. So I guess tires are a large expense for the mine since there are a few dozen dump trucks in the pit.

When we left the mine we headed over to Mitchell and Grant's great-grandparents home. This is the boys with their great-grandpa, Ray Ward. He is almost 88 years old and is fun to talk to. Betty, Mitchell and Grant's great-grandmother, had dementia but she really liked to see our puppy Max. She picked him up and talked to him. It was very cute. We are glad that the boys can see their great-grandparents at least once per year while we are in Utah visiting.