If you read my Friday's Rock post you'll know that I was looking for magnetite crystals up near Cedar City, Utah this weekend. Walking around the massive tailings piles, literal mountains themselves, I found this cool boulder.
At first I thought it was a ridiculously large core drill hole. Now that I think about it, it was probably a hole drilled for ventilation before the mine became an open pit mine. I've never seen core drill holes that big before and that is why I'm leaning towards a ventilation hole for the old mine.
I apologize, in my haste I didn't get a whole picture of the boulder, but it was big and worthless which is why they rolled it out of the mine and into the tailings pile.
I went to another open pit mine nearby today and the scale was mind blowing.
Here is a google satellite view.
In person it was the biggest mine I had ever been to. And as I mentioned the tailings piles were mountains unto themselves. An incredible amount of work. While this one is depleted, there are 3 other active mines in the area. Here is a shot from this open pit, to the active one across the valley.
All so we can have nice things made of iron. These are iron mines.
If you want to take a look for yourself search for Iron Mountain, Granite Mountain and/or Three Peaks in Utah. They are all 3 different mountain ranges in a row full of iron ore.
Thanks for reading!