THE WORLD'S BIGGEST MINING CAMP.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 150, 25 February 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE WORLD'S BIGGEST MINING CAMP.

A TRIUMPH OF ENGINEERING

J*ol ty miles from Salt Lake City, in a narrow, crooked two thousand feet deep gash ,11 tho barren, thousands-of-centiirie; old mountain,, of the Oquirrh Range, i> a group of mines, from which (says the "Scientific American") there was excavated and handled last year nearly one million cubic yards of ore and waste each week. At the time the engineers of the famous Culebra cut at Panama were making their highest excavating record they did not exceed three-fourths of u million yards per week.

In those appalling Oijuirrh Mountains steam shovels are working on terraces I,■ j<>o teet above the canyon. At Culchra, the highest peak handled was oO'J feet above tho canal level.

The Bingham camp is tho greatest copper-producing camp in the world, and the operation of .me company has resulted in the greatest open-mining wonder ot the world.

Over ttto-thirds of the output is coppel, making Bingham the greatest copper producer in the world, with the additional Mirpiising condition that no other nrne is operating such low-grado ore. its metal content ranging no higher than 2 per cent , and from that down io 1.1 per cent. I here are no shafts or tunnels driven; no hoisting or pumping. All is open-mining, and gigantic steam shovels do the work of the mucker and li s pick. Ten years ago this mine was practically a hand) nod. Suit the new managing engineer took charge and put new methods into operation, the stockholdery l'.ave received in dividends 25,0f)0,000dol., and as n.uch more has been earned and put into permanent development and equipment. Tlrs topical mine, up to the year irniU. .bad been operate! for the lead, •silver, and gold, but that became exhausted, and the copper ore was of too ridiculously low grade to show. then, any possibility of anything but loss. Then came an engineer from Missouri, 1). C. .Jackling, who has made a lifelong practice of changing "1 want to be shown" into "I'll show vou."

He looked over the mountain of copper ore, tested the surface and explored the abandoned tunnels and drifts. Then ho went to the old (stockholders and .said: ''There's copper there in enormous quantities, hundreds of thousands of tons. You've got through with the silver-lead ore; now work on the copper!"

"\es. we know." they jeered. "It's there, ail light, and what are you going to do about it r Two per cent, ore ! It won't pay for the picks and shovels used. Xo man has ever paid cost on less than six per cent, ore! Hun away and play at something else, Jaokling." He did so. He ran over to New \ ork and Boston, and bv his startlingly original proposition of open mining interested some big capitalists. He came back, bought up those old mines at old song figures, and formed a new company. He requisitioned no picks or shovels ; put no men into shafts and tunnels; set up 110 hosting engines or pumps. Instead, lie brought in rails and locomotives and giant steam shovels. Ho commenced stripping ->off the four-loot surface of gravel and clay, got down to the porphyry ore and set his big shovels to work on that. Two immense crushing and concentrating mil's to treat the ore have been built; the most audacious and costly '2O-milc industrial railroad in America to carry the ore to the mills; GO miles of tracks have been laid 011 terraces round that fifteen-hundred-foot high mountain, on which are operated a score of powerful locomotives, hundreds of steel cars, a dozen gigantic steam shovels, and many power drills. Across the Salt Lake Valley, twenty miles from the canyon, farmers and villagers are awakened each morning by the terrific blasts on that mountain. Over three tons of dynamite or other explosives are used between the changes of the night and day shifts, and the same quantity each evening. Dur ng the year just passed the company has had engineers making deep borings and scientific and exhaustive tetst.s to determine the quantity of that ore yet unworked Their report is that an excess of :U0.000.000 tons of millable ore in in those mountains, waiting to be used. At the present enormous rate of operation, that quantity will keep the 3,000 employees busy for another half ccnturv, but the company's plans, already perfected hut delayed just now by the great war. will quickly double the capacity uf all the apparatus and mills.