Kolmanskop (Afrikaans for Coleman's hill) is a ghost town in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz. It was named after a transport driver named Johnny Coleman who, during a sand storm, abandoned his ox wagon on a small incline opposite the settlement.
A következő címkéjű bejegyzések mutatása: mine. Összes bejegyzés megjelenítése
A következő címkéjű bejegyzések mutatása: mine. Összes bejegyzés megjelenítése
Bingham Canyon Mine, United States
The Bingham Canyon Mine, also known as the Kennecott Copper Mine, is an open-pit mining operation extracting a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, in the Oquirrh Mountains. It is the deepest open-pit mine in the world. The mine is owned by Rio Tinto Group, an international mining and exploration company headquartered in the United Kingdom. The copper operations at Bingham Canyon Mine are managed through Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation which operates the mine, a concentrator plant, a smelter, and a refinery. The mine has been in production since 1906, and has resulted in the creation of a pit over 0.75 miles (1.2 km) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres (7.7 km²). According to Kennecott, it is the world's largest man-made excavation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 under the name Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEL7Vwm1PXU?rel=0]
Minerals, in the form of copper ore, were first discovered in Bingham Canyon in 1848 by two brothers, Sanford and Thomas Bingham, sons of Erastus Bingham, Mormon pioneers of September 1847, who grazed their family's and other's cattle and horses there. They reported their find to their leader, Brigham Young, who advised against pursuing mining operations because the survival and establishment of settlements was of paramount importance at that time. The brothers applied themselves to that purpose as directed and did not stake a claim. In 1850, the Bingham family went to settle what is now Weber County, leaving the canyon still today known by their name.
It was not until 1863 that extraction of ore began and the potential of the canyon's mineral resources began to be widely recognized. At first, mining was difficult due to the area's rugged terrain, but a railroad reached the canyon in 1873, prompting greatly increased mining activity and accompanying settlement. The canyon's nineteenth-century mines were relatively small, however, and it was not until 1898 that plans for very large-scale exploitation of the canyon's ore bodies began to develop. That year, Samuel Newhouse and Thomas Weir formed the Boston Consolidated Mining Company, intending to increase mine development in the canyon.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8xcEOJuzQ?rel=0]
A more significant development took place in 1903, when Daniel C. Jackling and Enos A. Wall organized the Utah Copper Company. Utah Copper immediately began construction of a pilot mill at Copperton, just beyond the mouth of the canyon, and the company actually started mining in 1906. The success of Utah Copper in mining the huge but low-grade porphyry copper type orebody at Bingham Canyon revolutionized the copper industry, and set the pattern for the large open-pit porphyry copper mines that today dominate the copper industry worldwide. Utah Copper and Boston Consolidated merged in 1910. The Kennecott Copper Corporation, established in 1903 to operate mines in Kennecott, Alaska, purchased a financial interest in Utah Copper in 1915 and fully acquired the company in 1936.
Bingham's Canyon mine expanded rapidly, and by the 1920s the region was a beehive of activity. Some 15,000 people of widely-varying ethnicity lived in the canyon, in large residential communities constructed on the steep canyon walls. The population declined rapidly as mining techniques improved, however, and several of the mining camps began to be swallowed up by the ever-expanding mine. By 1980, when Lark was dismantled, only Copperton, at the mouth of Bingham Canyon and with a population of 800, remained. Today, mining operations continue at full-swing in the mine. For years, the largest open-pit mine in the world, it is still the largest copper mine and among the world's largest open-pit mines. Work to expand the mine 600 feet (180 m) east began in 2005, continuing to increase its size, growth, and capabilities.
Hashima Island, Japan
Hashima Island, (or correctly Hashima, as -shima is Japanese for island), commonly called Gunkanjima or Gunkanshima (meaning Battleship Island), is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki itself.
The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island's most notable features are the abandoned concrete buildings and the sea wall surrounding it. The island has been administered as part of Nagasaki city since 2005; it had previously been administered by the former town of Takashima.
It is known for its coal mines and their operation during the industrialization of Japan. Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890 and began the project, the aim of which was retrieving coal from undersea mines. They built Japan's first large concrete building (9 stories high), a block of apartments in 1916 to accommodate their burgeoning ranks of workers (many of whom were forcibly recruited labourers from other parts of Asia) and to protect against typhoon destruction. According to a South Korean commission, the island housed 500 Koreans who were forced to work between 1939 and 1945, during World War II.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6msT4eBba4?rel=0]
In 1959, the 15-acre island's population reached its peak of 5,259, with a population density of 835 people per hectare (83,500 people/km2, 216,264 people per square mile) for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare (139,100 people/km2) for the residential district.
As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima's mines were no exception. Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine in 1974, and today it is empty and bare, which is why it is called Ghost Island. Travel to Hashima was re-opened on April 22, 2009 after 35 years of closure.