Copper Mine

We toured a working open-pit copper mineral mine at ASARCO. You could see how copper ore is mined in the pits and how it is processed in the mill to extract copper minerals. The mine is a quarter mile deep, 2 miles from north to south, and 2 miles from east to west About 6 times the amount of earth moved to build the Panama canal has been mined there. You can see tailing's from the mine for miles along the interstate.

The trucks used to move the dirt are huge - their capacity is over 240 tons and tires are over 11 feet in diameter ( click on the photo to enlarge it, those spots are trucks over a mile away ). The price of a replacement tire made us feel like we had gotten a good deal when we replaced the motor home tires.