The Start of a Copper Empire
Kennecott is a great old mining name. The company by that name developed many large mines throughout its history. I know of several geologists that got their start working for Kennecott. Copper was Kennecott’s primary target because the company was formed at that time in history when copper was in great demand.
Thomas Edison had invented the light bulb (1879), Samual Morse the telegraph (1844) and Alexander Graham Bell the telephone (1875). The world needed to be connected by copper wire. The “War of the Currents” started between the GE company, the Westinghouse company and Nicola Tesla for who was going to build electric transmission lines and if the power was going to be direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC). Copper was the connecting fabric and Kennecott planned to supply it.
The start of this copper empire was Kennecott, Alaska, in 1900. The name Kennicott belonged to an early explorer that gave his name to a glacier. The mine was at the foot of this glacier, so it was also named Kennecott but wanting to make it special, they changed the spelling, replacing the “i” with an “e”.
This mineral occurrence was known to native Americans who used native copper found on the upper slopes to make tools and ornaments. Today, this area of Alaska is called Copper Valley and there’s a small village of Native Americans called Copper Center on the main road to Valdez. The deposit was very rich, riveling the rich Michigan copper deposits of the Upper Peninsula. Some of the ore was so high in copper that it was sent directly to the smelter. At that time, the nearest smelter was in Tacoma, Washington.
Large scale mining takes huge investments. In the case of Kennecott, the mines had to be developed, a mill built and a 195-mile railroad track had to be laid through very rough country in a place where the temperature dropped to -60 degrees in winter. Who could put up that kind of money?
Enter some of the great entrepreneurs of America; the Guggenheim brothers, JP Morgan and others put up the money to develop Kennecott and by so doing, built a great copper mining empire that spread from Alaska to Chile. This empire included the largest mines such as Chuquicamata in Chile. I’ve been to “Chuqui” and it’s impressive, still working since its early discovery in the colonial period of the Spanish conquest of South America.
The Kennecott mine was so high-grade that during the summer, workers were sent to gather eroded parts of the ore body from the slopes and off of the glacier. Chunks of bornite and chalcocite were said to be lying on the ground and gathered like potatoes.
Geologists have not been able to determine the origin for this deposit. The forms of the mineralization are veins and replacements but the origin doesn’t fit a classic deposit type. The host rocks are of interest as they include a greenstone that has high background values of copper and dolomite beds. One hypothesis is that meteoric waters heated by the surrounding intrusive rocks scavenged copper from the greenstone and transported it to favorable sites along fractures and at the contact with the dolomite formation.
The 16-story mill building at Kennecott, Alaska.
There are certain events in human history that spur development. The production of bronze spurred the mining of tin and copper in various parts of the world. The most advanced was by the Romans in England around 2,000 BC. The discovery of the New World in 1492 enabled the discovery and development of gold mines in the Americas and brought about the end of the Dark Ages in Europe. The 1849, discovery of placer gold in California spurred the settlement of the Western US. Today, the development of electric vehicles and computers has spurred a new era of lithium, rare earths and copper mining. Being an exploration geologist for most of my working life, I can’t help myself. I’ve been trying to stay informed with any new technologic development so, hopefully, I can be the first to discover the next important commodity.
