After a gorgeous home tour throughout the mountainous areas east of Salt Lake City, where much gold, silver, and copper were used in fixtures and plumbing et al, yesterday we went to the largest open pit copper mine in the world.
It’s so large a scar on our mountains and landscape that one can see it and the Great Wall of China, only two man-made structures, from space. The pit is 24 miles wide. I did cry while looking down at the pit because of the dust and wind that swirls around. But I was sad that we ground up mountains from the top down to make a small amount of copper, silver and gold.
It occurs to me that today we could and should go underground with much better conditions than the miners had 100 years ago and not eat up gorgeous mountains to do it. Yes, Park City was once Treasure Mountain, where the miners hoisted themselves up and skied down the mountain, went back in the mine and did it again. Alf Englund has a museum across the road we haven’t seen yet about the history of skiing. That would provide me with more information to tell you.
It broke my heart to see this open pit from the inside. The folks wanted the video so we bought it but I couldn’t wait to get out of there. No matter what environmental mitigation they do (they were forced by one volunteer to do so) as soon as the lode ends they’ll disappear and never level the land or plant trees and we’ll never, ever have our mountains back again. Open pit mining may have been revolutionary in the 1930’s but is not now and I don’t know how this mine keeps operating given its philosophy, which its marketing people say is environmentally friendly.
OK, you have a vegetable garden. Do you weed it periodically by hand? By this process a backhoe would dig up a swath and see if your radishes are ready, then discard all the trash by your water supply.
If I can ever afford it I may buy antique copper pots, lined with tin. Check the mine out for yourself http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=bingham+mine&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Cooking with Dee 