Our driver/tour guide Michael was very efficient and showed us a wonderful time. The first part of our tour was the Great Salt Lake. Michael was a wealth of trivia information and kept even the kids entertained. The Great Salt Lake is the remnants of the ancient Bonneville Lake. Thousands of years ago, Lake Bonneville encompassed most all of Utah and Idaho - and actually emptied into the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. As the climate changed and the waters lowered, some of the old Lake Bonneville was trapped in Utah with out any outlet to the ocean. Over thousands more years, the waters continued to evaporate and became very salty because of the lack of an outlet. At it’s highest point, the Great Salt Lake was 850 feet deeper than it is now, with most of the Salt Lake Valley under water. In recent years - maybe the last 200 or so - the level of the lake has fluctuated greatly. The lake today is approximately 74 miles long and has an average depth of about 13-15 feet! There are 12 islands within this lake - only one is accessible - most of the others are off limits to people. Antelope Island is the largest and is home to many Buffalo, Elk, Deer and other wild animals. The island is a State Park and offers hiking and wildlife watching for the most part. The water of the Great Salt Lake is about 24% salt (90% of that is simply Sodium Chloride - or table salt) , making it the second saltiest body of water in the world. It is called “America’s Dead Sea”, but the Great Salt Lake is not entirely dead. The Dead Sea is the saltiest at 28% and is truly DEAD - as nothing exists in it’s waters. The Great Salt Lake is home to Brine Shrimp, so it is not Dead Dead.
Our first stop at the lake is what is left of Saltair - the third reincarnation of Salt Lake’s idea of a Coney Island in Utah. The original park was constructed on stilts about a mile out on the lake (from the shoreline that was in existence at that time) in the 1800’s. The pictures show that it was a very popular place! Unfortunately, it caught fire and burned down. The park was rebuilt in the same place, but it too burned down. In 1982, Saltair was constructed on the shoreline, not out over the water. It was partially built of stone blocks, probably to avoid being burned down again! In 1987 the Great Salt Lake had a record water intake from the massive snow melt in the mountains, causing a major flood wiping out most of Saltair and flooding I-80 for most of a year! The truckers were not happy campers that year cause the detour was about 200 miles! The roadways have since been elevated and dikes put in place so a flood won’t be a problem again, but Saltair was never reconstructed as it was intended. Today the remains are used as a venue for concerts and other gatherings once in a while - it is mostly just abandoned except for a gift shop and a gallery of very old photos.
Our second stop was at the Marina. This is one of three Marina’s on the Great Salt Lake. Not impressive at all. Lots of sail boats like to use the lake, but since there is no fish in the water and the water is very salty, we didn’t see any other boats or swimmers around. I would have thought it would have been crowded because of the Holiday weekend and the warm weather, but not so. Here our guide told us of the “Sea Monkeys” that inhabit the lake. Well, OK - they aren’t really monkeys, they are really the brine shrimp. They kind of resemble a monkey because of their long tail - and apparently it is easier to get kids interested in Monkey’s rather than Shrimp! He caught one for us to view - didn’t even look like a shrimp, but it did have a long tail.
The second part of our tour was the Kennecott Utah Copper’s Mine at Bingham Canyon. The “state of the art” Smelter is across I-80 from the Marina location. Nobody is allowed to tour this facility as they produce thousand of tons of Copper, Gold and Silver there. This mine produces approximately 300,000 tons of Copper, 500,000 ounces of Gold, 4 million ounces of Silver, 30 million pounds of molybdenum, and 1 million tons of Sulfuric Acid each year! The Gold alone pays for the entire mining and refining efforts - everything else is gravy!! The actual mine is about 20 miles away from the smelter. Years ago the tailings of the smelting process was just dumped into the Great Salt Lake, so that is why the smelter is so far removed from the mine. A long tunnel thru the mountain was used to carry the ore on rail cars to the smelter then. Today the entire process is much more efficient and rail cars are no longer used for the ore transfer. More about all that later.
Bingham Canyon is the birthplace of the open-pit mining process. In the beginning, they were trying to operate this location in the traditional way of digging shafts into the earth to get to the ore. Unfortunately, it was not very profitable because even though this area has lots of great minerals, they are dispersed in small segments thru out the surrounding rock. The veins are rich, but because of the dispersal too much rock has to be moved to get enough of the minerals to make the mine profitable. The same Kennecott from Alaska fame came to Utah and simply bought up the entire mountain range for the minerals it held. The local miners were glad because it was too hard for them to get enough out of the ground to make it worthwhile for them to continue mining. This mine started as a mountain peak and is now a big hole in the ground. The open-pit method has been used here for the last 146 years - and the mine has been sold on several occasions. The current owner’s are the Rio Tinto Group - a huge conglomerate that owns many mines all over the world!
Here are a few photos showing just how big this mine is. This is one of only two structures on Earth that is visible from space by the Astronauts as they pass in the Space Shuttle. The Great Wall of China is the other structure. This mine is the largest man-excavated site on Earth! Currently it is approximately 3 miles wide and almost 1 mile deep. If you stretched out all the roadways in the mine it would be over 500 miles long! There are 70 gigantic haulage trucks - each carrying from 255 - 320 tons of material in a single trip. Together they travel over 10,000 miles each day! Most of the trucks carry the “Overburden” - or rock that has no ore in it - away from the mine - dumping it over the edges. That is what makes the sides of the hills you see as you approach the mine. Maybe 1 out of every 10 trucks dump their load into the crusher - so you can see just how dispersed the actual good stuff is! It is amazing how much work has to be done to get the good stuff out. 3-4 times a day they set off explosives to break more of the mountain apart. On average each day they drill about 200 holes that are at least 75 feet deep into the rock, load the holes with explosives (about 1200 pounds) and set them all off at once. Being Sunday, we did not get to see a blast. Today they use a special blasting agent that basically pulverizes the rock into large gravel size. The blasts used to create large boulders and now the largest boulder is about the size of a basketball - but most of the rock is much smaller. It makes the crusher more efficient and actually the entire process go more smoothly.
From the crusher, the rock is loaded onto a large conveyor belt and delivered to the Concentrator Unit thru a tunnel about 5 miles away. We did not get to visit the concentrator, but after viewing the 15 minute informative video at the Visitor’s Center, we learned that the crushed rock is further crushed into a fine powder, mixed with liquid and processed so that the minerals gather on the surface and then skimmed off. The minerals are then transported thru a pipeline 17 miles to the Smelter. The Tailings - the part that doesn’t hold any good minerals - in also transported thru a pipeline 13 miles to the holding area to wait to be recycled.
The Smelter is extremely efficient and very green. In fact the entire process is done with nature in mind. Most all the toxic by-products, including dust and gases, are all captured and recycled so they do not impact the surround areas. The Smelter produces “Blister Copper” that is 98.6% pure and contains not only the Copper, but also the Gold and Silver. The Blister Copper is cooled into 720 pound plates called Anodes. These are sent to the Refinery to be further processed. At the Refinery, the Anodes are placed into a vat and intermingled with stainless steel sheets, called Cathode’s. An electrical current is sent between the Anode’s and Cathode’s in the vat for 10 days. During this time the Copper migrates from the Anode to the Cathode producing a Copper sheet that is 99.99% pure Copper. The Copper is separated from the stainless steel sheet and sent to market. The Gold and Silver drops to the bottom of the vat and are recovered for further processing. We all know that Copper is used to make Pennies, but we learned today that Copper is probably the most valuable mineral in our daily lives! Copper is used in almost everything we use everyday to survive. Most electronics contain Copper, our homes are normally wired with Copper, our water pipes are usually made of copper, our cars contain lots of Copper components - and the list goes on and on!
Before departing, we had to take the “photo’s to prove we were there” pictures. This tire is one of the smaller ones - the one’s they use now are way bigger. The biggest trucks have 6 wheels and each wheel has it’s own engine! The driver has to climb a staircase to get to the driver’s seat. The truck is about the size of a house! They look small from our vantage point, the pickup trucks and even the school bus look like matchbox toys! We were all mesmerized watching the trucks - kind of took us all back to childhood when we played with toy trucks. I wonder if the people driving the trucks or operating the other equipment ever think of it all that way? Maybe they are all just “big kids” - playing!
After leaving the mine, we had wonderful panoramic views of the Salt Lake Valley. Our guide pointed out the different mountains and communities all along the Wasatch Mountain Range. Still some snow on the peaks and the day was clear enough that it made a really pretty sight.
Since we are still without transportation, our tour guide agreed to drop us off at a restaurant so we could get some dinner. The Red Iguana on North Temple will now be one of our very favorite places to visit. The line outside stretched a ways and we had to wait about 30 minutes to be seated - a true sign of a great place! The Negra Modela was cold and good - the food was outstanding! After we finished dinner, our friendly shuttle driver, Mike, from the Holiday Inn came and ferried us back to the hotel.
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