The Liberty Pit

Digging on the Liberty Pit began in 1908, when the Nevada Northern Railway tracks reached Copper Flat from Ely. What later became the pit had originally been two small hills, whose topographic contours were mapped in 1906, with railroad tracks added to a 1910 map version after 1908. The Liberty Pit grew to one mile long, five-eighths of a mile wide, and more than 500 feet deep, and at one time it was the largest man-made hole in the world. Railroad tracks in the pit included 14 miles of concentric loops used to remove both overburden and ore. By the mid 1950's, Kennecott Copper Corporation had mined at least 125 million tons of ore from the Liberty Pit, producing more than 3 trillion pounds of copper, 1.3 million ounces of gold, and 4.8 million ounces of silver. The Liberty Pit is no longer actively mined, but other open pits in the Robinson District still operate. Quadra Mining acquired the property in 2004 and continued producing copper, gold, silver, and other metals, and KGHM International purchased Quadra FNX in March 2012.

Ely, Nevada · United States