"Jeff Wisnia" wrote in message
...
Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:
"Jeff Wisnia" wrote in message
...

snip--
but if you were to return to the same mine, you wouldn't recognize it.
For
one, do you recall driving through a long tunnel, from Bingham Canyon to
Copperfield, the town on the other side of the tunnel? That's where
the
observation point was when you go back far enough in time, for which '55
should qualify.

I do remember that tunnel, and also a "town", if you could call it that,
stretched out along a mile or more of road which had houses and shops on
both sides of it.

The town in question was Bingham.

But, what I can't forget was stopping along that road to grab a Coke
with whatever college buddy I was driving across the country with, and
being immediately surrounded by very young native american kids begging
for handouts.

Being about 19 at the time, and I suppose having led what you'd consider
a sheltered existance around the cities of San Francisco and Boston, I'd
never experienced child beggars before or after that, here in the USA,
though I've sure seen plenty of them elsewhere in the world since then.
I'm always saddened by it, wherever it happens, though I understand that
it's just local industry in some places.

That surprises me. I don't recall any large number of them in Bingham, and
I spent considerable time there until the vast majority of the people moved
out, many to West Jordan and Midvale, where I was born and raised.

What you described could have easily been in another place----did you drive
through any of the Indian reservations in Southern Utah?

Bingham was a real melting pot------very unlike much of Utah. Because of
the mine, where men could find work easily, ethnics could live and work
without having a knowledge of English, so many of the people were
foreigners. My grandparents and my father lived in Bingham early on, having
immigrated from Greece. People, for the most part, got along beautifully,
and were not much influenced by the Mormon Church, very unlike the majority
of Utah. Only in one other city or town was it like that, and that was
in Carbon County, Price, specifically. Another mining town, but this one
coal mining.

There were two drugstores in Bingham, owned by two brothers named Evans, as
I recall. A very close family friend, who used to live in Bingham, worked
for them. The one store was under the apartment complex owned by the family
friend's father. The Royal Apartments, a 5 story building. There was almost
no room in the narrow canyon, so everything was built up, thus the very
narrow road.


Not only is the tunnel no longer there, neither is the mountain. It
has
all been mined and is now a much larger hole in the ground. It was
that
way when I left Utah. I can't imagine what it must look like now.

Yes, that mountain reminded me of a volcano, with a spiral road with RR
tracks running around the inside. From the observation point we could
see the dust puffs from blasting going on here and there on the inside
walls, I remember it seemed like there was one of those explosions every
few minutes.

That, too, is totally different now. There are no trains, not even to
deliver the ore to the smelter, which is several miles away, on the southern
tip of the Great Salt Lake. Huge trucks now haul the overburden and ore,
which is crushed and placed on a huge conveyer, transporting it around the
mountain to the smelter. Hope I have it right. My memory is growing dim.

The operation was (is?) known as Kennecott Copper. In recent years, it
was sold on more than one occasion. While we were still living in Utah, the
entire operation was shut down for what they called modernization. True
enough, they did modernize, but their objective was to bust the union, which
was way too powerful. People I knew held a job there, and held full time
employment elsewhere as well. It was an often heard line that they'd go to
work at Kennecott to get their night's sleep. Needless to say, the mine ran
7/24/365. When the mine closed down, they had a work force of something
over 8,000 employees. When it was restarted, about 2,500 were called back,
with a greater output than before. Not only was it more efficient, those
that were called back were actually expected to work.

During that same trip through Utah a large wooden water pipeline ran
alongside a road we were on, and I couldn't resist having my traveling
companion take this silly photo of me at a spot where some AH must have
taken a potshot at the pipe.

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/leaker.html

Thanks for the mammaries...

Jeff

That must have been along US 40, which was the main route east/west through
northern Utah. You'll notice there are no mountains in the picture, and
the Great Salt Lake appears to be in the background, so it must be the
pipeline that carried water to the smelter in question. Do you recall
seeing a huge (black) slag pile on the south side of the road?

Harold