They reported their find to their leader, Brigham Young, who advised against pursuing mining operations because the survival and establishment of settlements were of paramount importance at that time.

In 1896, Samuel Newhouse and Thomas Weir acquired the Highland Boy Mine, which was rich in copper, silver, and gold.

Utah Copper immediately began construction of a pilot mill at Copperton,[17] just beyond the mouth of the canyon, and the company actually started mining in 1906.

[17]: 9 The open-pit owners replaced an antiquated 1000-car railroad with conveyor belts and pipelines for transporting the ore and waste, which reduced costs by nearly 30% and returned the operation to profitability.

[21][22][23] On the basis that the mine's steep walls made it a high risk for landslides, an interferometric radar system had been previously installed to monitor the ground's stability.

As a result of warnings produced by this system, mining operations had been shut down the previous day in anticipation of the slide and there were no injuries.

Since the early 1990s, Kennecott has spent more than $400 million on clean-up efforts on the affected areas to avoid regulatory laws that would have placed them on the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL).

"[18]: E1, E8 Structurally, Late Paleozoic rocks were thrust faulted over the Precambrian craton during the Cretaceous Sevier orogeny.

[18]: E4 Copper and molybdenum sulfide minerals are dispersed in the intruded stock and in the adjoining carbonate sedimentary skarns.

[31] Flotation then separates the gangue from the metalliferous particles, which float off as a 28-percent concentrate of copper along with lesser amounts of silver, gold, lead, molybdenum, platinum and palladium.

The filtered concentrate slurry is piped 17 miles (27 km) to the smelter, where it is dried, and then injected along with oxygen into a flash smelting furnace to oxidize the iron and sulfur.

The 70-percent-copper matte is water-quenched to form a sand-like solid, then injected, with oxygen, into a flash-converting furnace that produces molten, 98.6-percent-pure copper.

Kennecott's Bingham Canyon Mine is the largest artificially made excavation in the world, and is visible to the naked eye from an orbiting space shuttle.

[34] Rio Tinto purchased Kennecott Utah Copper in 1989 and has invested about $2 billion in the modernization of KUC's operations.

Mines in Chile, Indonesia, Arizona, Peru, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia exceeded Bingham Canyon's annual production rate in 2023.

[40] Activities to clean up 100 years of accumulated impacts began in the 1990s, under state Utah Department of Environmental Quality and federal oversight and are ongoing.

The South Zone includes the Bingham Mining District in the Oquirrh Mountains, about 25 mi (40 km) southwest of Salt Lake City, the open pit, waste rock dumps, Copperton Mill and other historic sites.

The company avoided regulatory issues of being on the NPL by voluntarily cleaning up the contaminated lands, the Superfund Alternative Approach.

During the 1904–1905 winter, the farmers gathered together and decided to file suit against the smelters in the United States District Court of Utah.

[47] Copper has a very high boiling point of 4,644 °F (2,562 °C) and also requires use of other chemicals to separate it from other metals and impurities present in the ore. Asbestos has microscopic particles that dispersed into the atmosphere and contributed to illnesses among workers and individuals living near the mines.

The State of Utah proceeded with legal action against Kennecott and filed a damage claim against the mine in October 1986, for the loss and destruction of the natural resources, specifically the groundwater.

The mine responded by proposing various potential strategies including buying up entire subdivisions near the tailings pond, calculating the company's liability if the embankment failed, investing $500 million (or $1.3 billion today) to reinforce the embankment, and colluding with state regulators to keep the engineering report out of the public eye.

Then, in 1997, Carter (a professor at Brigham Young University) put forward that the mine discharge of PM10 has caused lung damage to neighboring residents.

[58] In 2008, the United States Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service sued Kennecott after the release of hazardous substances including selenium, copper, arsenic, zinc, lead, and cadmium.

A federal biologist claimed that these chemicals have caused great damage to the ecosystems and resources that support the migrant bird populations, as well as other fish and wildlife habitats.

The Salt Lake Tribune published a report in 2007 revealing that the company failed to disclose information on possible damages that could occur if the tailings pond collapsed in the event of a major earthquake.

[60] Bingham Canyon Mine was featured in the 1973 made-for-TV movie Birds of Prey, with protagonist helicopter pilot Harry Walker (played by David Janssen) piloting his Hughes 500 into the crater to track down three bank robbers and their female hostage in an Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama, which was hiding behind heavy mining machinery.