The world's largest man-made excavation is a copper mine in Utah's Oquirrh Mountains.

Countries & Cities · Published 15 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Bingham Canyon Mine is a colossal open-pit operation that has reshaped the Utah landscape since 1906. While it provides a significant portion of global copper, its history is marked by massive industrial scale, environmental remediation, and a complex legacy of labor, innovation, and corporate evolution under Rio Tinto.

The Bingham Canyon Mine began as a vision in 1887 when Enos Andrew Wall identified copper potential in the canyon. By 1903, the Utah Copper Company was established, and full-scale excavation commenced in 1906. The site grew into the largest man-made excavation on Earth, with cumulative production exceeding 17 million tonnes of copper. During the Second World War, the mine proved vital to the Allied effort, supplying roughly 30 percent of the copper required for the conflict. The operation has since evolved through various owners, including the Guggenheim Exploration and Standard Oil of Ohio, before becoming a division of the Rio Tinto Group in 1989.

Operating at such a massive scale brings significant environmental challenges. Historical mining practices left a legacy of groundwater contamination across 80 square miles of Salt Lake County. Since the late 1980s, Kennecott has invested over $450 million in remediation efforts, including a $100 million reverse osmosis facility to treat mining-influenced water. These actions led to the site's removal from the EPA's National Priorities List. Despite these efforts, the company remains a point of contention for local environmentalists, who cite the facility as a leading source of toxic releases in Utah and express concerns regarding air quality and lead emissions.

The mine's impact extends beyond geology and environment into the social fabric of Utah. The expansion of the pit eventually subsumed the City of Bingham Canyon, which was disincorporated in 1971. Today, the company manages land assets through the Kennecott Land Company, which has developed residential areas like Daybreak. The workforce has also shifted over time; while early labor disputes in 1912 involved the use of strikebreakers, the mine later became a hub of ethnic diversity, recruiting workers from dozens of backgrounds. As Rio Tinto looks toward 2029, it plans to extend the mine's life by deepening the pit and pushing back its walls, aiming to access an additional 700 million tons of ore.

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