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Show The Story of Copper in Utah '5 Mountain, man and machinery combine to produce about one-third of nation's output. most compels one's imagination to wander. Men at work look almost gnome-like against the huge ter-, ter-, races that form the walls which slope outward from the center of the great pit. The vast network of tracks that circle each level or terrace and the trains appear not unlike toys in the vastness of the huge bowl. When man first visioned this enterprise en-terprise he was thought by many to be a dreamer, like many other men who wronght some of the great accomplishments of industry and science. The man who visioned Utah Copper was D. C. Jackling, wlin ill "IS'lrt min Prl tho tnlvr (Editor's Note: This is the second of a series of eight articles titled "The Story of Copper in Utah.") The story of Utah Copper is a story of a mountain, men and machinery, ma-chinery, all combined to produce from one mine approximately one-third one-third of the nation's output of copper cop-per and to make Utah's greatest employer and largest taxpayer. The Mountain is situated about 2S miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The mountains to the west of Salt Lake City the Oquirrhs, an Indian name meaning West Motm-1 Motm-1 tain look much the same as the other peaks that surround Salt Lake Valley. One hill of this vast Oquinii range is a porphyry mass (a rock resembling granite) through which is disceminated a small amount of copper loss than one per cent (to the ton), and minute amounts of gold, silver and molybdenum. molyb-denum. This spot is known as Bingham. Since 1004 men and machinery have been whittling away at this" block of ore to supply copper for peace timo Industry anil for war. During Dur-ing these 42 years a huge bowl has been hewed out of the mountain so that a great ampitheatre now exists ex-ists not unlike an oversized football foot-ball stadium. To view this great enterprise from one of the upper levels al- hill at Bingham and foresaw the possibilities that existed through the application of machinery to make production on a scale large enough to make the cost of production produc-tion low enough to permit commercial com-mercial extraction of the small amount of copper. This was new to the copper industry as up to Jackling's time the world's copper production had come from veins of high grade copper ore. Jackling had no easy time: many turned his project down and it took years for his broad vision to win recognition. (This is the second of a series of eight articles titled "The Story of Copper in Utah." The third wili appear ap-pear in these columns soon.) |
