Bingham Canyon Mine: The Copper Pit That Swallowed Its Towns, Utah

In the Oquirrh Mountains southwest of Salt Lake City, a narrow canyon once held a long, crowded mining town. Bingham Canyon was founded in 1863 and incorporated in 1904. At its peak, the city had about 15,000 residents. Its single main street ran up the bottom of the canyon, so narrow that a 1942 newspaper caption called it "the narrowest city in the world." Bingham wasn't one town but many. Up the side canyons were neighborhoods and camps such as Carr Fork, Highland Boy, Copperfield, Dinkeyville, Frog Town and Markham. Many had strong ethnic identities. Scandinavians lived in Carr Fork, and southern and eastern Europeans settled in Highland Boy. Down the hill, the separate town of Lark was established in 1866. What made the canyon rich was copper. In the 1890s, miners recognized a vast low-grade copper deposit. The Utah Copper Company was formed in 1903, and open-pit mining began in 1906. Instead of tunneling, the company dug the mountain away in great terraced steps. Over the decades, "the hill" became the world's largest open-pit copper mine. The problem was that the mine kept growing, and the towns were in the way. The company began relocating people as early as 1926, when it built Copperton as a company town on the flats at the canyon mouth. Through the middle of the 20th century, the expanding pit and its waste rock consumed the canyon. Copperfield was demolished in 1958, and Highland Boy and Copperfield were gone by 1960. By 1971, little of Bingham remained. Its last 31 residents voted to disincorporate, and the last buildings were razed in 1972. Lark came next. In 1977, Kennecott told Lark's 591 residents the town was coming down to make room for mine waste. The fight made national news. In 1978, Kennecott offered 120 percent of appraised value, $1,000 toward moving, and free relocation of homes to Copperton. By the end of 1980, Lark had disappeared from the map. The pit kept growing. Today it's about 2.5 miles across and nearly three-quarters of a mile deep, and it has produced more copper than any other mine in history. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1966. In April 2013, a massive slide inside the pit sent tons of rock down its walls. Monitoring had warned of the movement in advance, and no one was hurt. Copperton, built to move people out of the canyon, celebrates its centennial in 2026. It's the only one of the canyon's towns still standing. The rest are now part of the pit or buried under its waste rock.