Arizona Oddities

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Your Guides
  • Departments
    • Art
    • Dose of History
    • Culture
    • Natural Surroundings
    • Odd Observations
    • Weather Talk
    • Food & Dining
    • Small Town Scene
    • Recreation
    • Only in Arizona
  • Get the Books
  • Contact Us

logo

Arizona Oddities

  • Home
  • Your Guides
  • Departments
    • Art
    • Dose of History
    • Culture
    • Natural Surroundings
    • Odd Observations
    • Weather Talk
    • Food & Dining
    • Small Town Scene
    • Recreation
    • Only in Arizona
  • Get the Books
  • Contact Us
Natural SurroundingsSouthern Arizona
Home›Natural Surroundings›Lavender Pit in Bisbee Produced Massive Amounts of Copper

Lavender Pit in Bisbee Produced Massive Amounts of Copper

By Sam Lowe
October 16, 2015
1536
0
Lavender Pit in Bisbee

Lavender Pit in Bisbee.

BISBEE – If you’ve ever used a kitchen spoon to dig a hole in your back yard, or wondered how long it would take you to shovel your way to China, the Lavender Pit may be your personal mecca. It’s a big hole in the ground, dug over a 23-year span as part of a copper mining operation. It’s wider than anything you ever scooped out with Mom’s best soup ladle, and deeper than anything you’ve ever imagined while burying your secret money cache out behind the garage.

The pit is humongous – 1,000 feet deep, three-quarters of a mile wide, a mile-and-a-half long, and covering 600 acres. From 1951, when the digging started, until 1974, when the operation shut down, men and machines dug 375 million tons of material out of it. That figure included 94 million tons of ore, 108 million tons of leach material, and 173 million tons of waste rock.

The pit, named after former Phelps Dodge official Harrison Morton Lavender Sr., was also responsible for obliterating a town. Before mining operations began, the 191 homes and businesses that made up the community of Lowell had to be relocated.

(Visited 422 times, 1 visits today)

Related Posts:

  1. The Concrete Iron Man of Bisbee
  2. Sharlot Hall All Gussied Up in Copper
  3. Move Over Chicago, Best Franks Found at Jimmy’s Hot Dog Company in Bisbee
  4. Creepy Curiosities Found at The Bisbee Mini Museum of the Bizarre
  5. Walter Swan Created One Unique Way to Sell Books in Bisbee
Tagsbisbeemining

Leave a reply Cancel reply

SUBSCRIBE

Arizona Oddities Archive

Most Popular Posts

  • How to Keep Scorpions Away from Your Home
  • How to Keep Javelinas Away from Your Yard
  • What’s With All the Backyard Concrete-Block Fences…
  • What’s With All the Cockroaches in the Valley?…
  • Did Camels Ever Roam Wild in Arizona?

This Week Past Years

2014

  • The Mine That Ate an Arizona Town

2013

  • What's the Story Behind the Building Foundation on Top of Shaw Butte?
  • Anthem's Amazing Solar Tribute to Veterans

2012

  • Did You Know? Quirky Arizona Facts from Marshall Trimble
  • Featured Artists: Sheri and Ralph Meldrum of Meldrum Art

2011

  • Are Horny Toads Disappearing from Phoenix?
  • Geronimo's Face In the Rocks

2010

  • Origin of Hollywood Sidewalk Stars in Downtown Phoenix
  • The Famous Faces of Canyon de Chelly?
  • Life in Old Boom Towns with Jackass Prospectors
  • Recent

  • Popular

  • Comments

  • Find a Famous Writer and Explorer's Mountain Retreat in Greer

    Find a Famous Writer and Explorer’s Historic Mountain Retreat in Greer

    By Taylor Haynes
    July 31, 2020
  • thousands of Mexican free tail bats make Phoenix tunnel their summer home

    Thousands of Mexican Free-Tail Bats Make Phoenix Tunnel Their Summer Home

    By Taylor Haynes
    July 17, 2020
  • How to Keep Scorpions Away from Your Home

    By Andrea Aker
    January 3, 2011
  • Javelina

    How to Keep Javelinas Away from Your Yard

    By Andrea Aker
    November 23, 2011
  • Carol
    on
    October 17, 2020

    The Tucson Artifacts are the Southwest’s Greatest Hoax

    lol ... these "clues" ...
  • Laurie Vitt
    on
    October 14, 2020

    How to Keep Javelinas Away from Your Yard

    They are not rodents. ...

Follow us

© Copyright 2009 – 2020 Aker Ink, LLC :: Arizona Oddities is published by Aker Ink.