Bingham Canyon Mining Towns, Salt Lake County

There are several company towns that were born in Bingham Canyon. The only left to visit now is one of the biggest open pit mines in the world. It's a spectacular sight, one I highly recommend seeing.

You can see Kennecott from anywhere in the valley

I just love what the rain has done to the overburden.

A drive up Butterfield Canyon and you can almost see to the bottom of the mine!

Each of those trucks is easily the size of a two story house

Using the camera zoom for binoculars!

Thomas and Sanford Bingham gave the canyon its name. They grazed horses and cattle in the canyon in the 1850's when they discovered precious metals. They told Brigham Young who advised them to leave it alone. After being driven from their homes multiple times, he feared the discovery would bring prospectors and persecutors who would drive them out of the valley.

The U.S. Army lay claim in 1863 (or 1883 according to other sources) after the discovery of gold. Colonel Patrick Conner sent soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas to the Oquirrh mountains and organized a mining district. Several towns grew.  The first miners lived in dugouts on the canyon walls.

Before 1920 over 5,000 people were employed by the mines, roughly 4,000 of them foreign born. It was a true melting pot!

Bingham is the biggest and seemingly best known of the old towns.  Organized in 1904, this town grew up a narrow canyon. At its largest, the town was seven miles long and only a half block wide. This town had a short life. Engineers established in 1910 the whole mountain had enough copper ore to have an open pit mine rather than tunnel for ore. Mine operations grew and overtook the town. By 1961 many residents had moved to Copperton to make way for the overburden. The town board send a request to Utah Power to shut off the street lights in 1972. "This is to advise that as of June 30, 1972, there will be no more office in Bingham Canyon; it is finished." 


Lark was a prospector who came with the rush. The town of Lark was established January 1866. By 1929 the United State Smelting and Refining Company expanded the town. At its peak the population topped 800. As non-copper mines began to close, the town went into decline. The last silver, zinc and lead mine closed around 1971. Kennecott Copper bought the land in 1972 and announced foreclosure in 1977. The Bingham Canyon Mine (which most of us locals call "Kennecott") needed more land for the overburden. Lark got national news as some residents fought for the towns survival. Particularly from 81 year old Hilda Grabner, who is the resident I found quoted in every article I read. Kennecott paid 120% of the appraised value of the homes and an additional $1000 to relocate. Many homes themselves were moved to Copperton. By 1978 Lark was dismantled. There is currently a "Lark entrance" in memory of the town, but the site has since been buried.

Some of the articles are very dramatic. "Doomed Lark, Utah Faces Death on New Year's Day" reads a California headline. New Year's Day 1979 there were 25 families left in the town. 18 of which were having their homes moved to Copperton. There are fantastic pictures of the homes and buildings of Lark at BYU's archive.

Another town was Highland Boy, also called Utah Consolidated, but that's boring. This town was known for its seasonal fires and snowslides. At its peak the town had hotels, boarding houses, saloons, stores and schools. Highland Boy was the most successful of the little claims in the canyon because it was the first to not see the copper as a nuisance to the gold mining. Most other mines in the canyon were silver and gold. Copper was shipped out for processing in 1896. The Deseret News in February 1900 says this mine produced 70% of the country's copper output, or 300 MILLION POUNDS annually. In 1900 that must have been quite a feat.
Kennecott currently produces 300,000 TONS of copper, 400,000 ounces of gold, 4 million ounces of silver, 30 million pounds of molybdenum and 1 million tons of sulfuric acid annually.

Copperton, built by the Utah Copper Company in 1927, is the last company town from the 20,000 residents who lived in these mountains at their peak (Bingham, Copperton, Highland Boy and numerous smaller camps). The canyon is full of overburden, but many of the homes here are from the other mine towns, preserving the memory of the previous ventures. The homes were sold to employees starting 1956.

Copperton doesn't look like a ghost town, until you hit the street that once went up the canyon

Bibliography: (I'm tired right now, so I'll finish this bibliography properly... later...)


http://utahethnicandminingmuseumofmagna.com/Brief_History.html 

^{http://archives.utah.gov/research/agencyhistories/78.html}

MSS P 780; Kennecott Copper Corporation photographs of Lark, Utah; Photographic Archives; L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Following citations: MSS P 780, LTPSC.

http://www.ghostdepot.com/rg/mainline/utah/bingham.htm

<sup>Pictures of Lark:  http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/SCMisc/id/29065

Milwalkee: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19780703&id=9lwaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pCkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3830,1333648

California: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19781230&id=5J5PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6AUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5109,9213116


http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19000202&id=EIJIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ClYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3055,1517469

Picture of old Bingham town: http://www.ghostdepot.com/rg/images/utah/bingham%20canyon%20main%20street%20bev%20c1940%20pc.jpg</sup>