Kennecott Utah Copper

Well, Morenci claims to be the largest mine in the United States.

Of course, if you go up to Salt Lake City, Kennecott might claim the same.

So Morenci is probably the largest mine.

or is the largest in Arizona.

Um, and sure, I've been been in this business a long time now.

I mean, I started, good heavens, I started as a junior field assistant working in Northern British Columbia for KenCo Explorations, a subsidiary of Kennecott Copper in 1970.

So I've been going, really, it's, it's hard to believe, it's 56 years now.

And so I really kinda got into the game in, in, in, I would say 1993.

Now, there were two other great American mining companies that rose out of our industrial renaissance.

There was Anaconda and Kennecott, but all of them were nationalized by, uh, uh, a leftist president in Chile named Allende.

Uh, Allende took them away, uh, took them for the Chilean state, and, uh, America responded by killing him.

The United States CIA murdered Allende, and he was replaced by a right-wing general named, uh, Pinochet.

He followed him off into the darkness, driving down this dark, winding road that led into the canyons.

The Kennecott Mine was three square miles wide with rocky terrain and mountains on every side.

So they were driving for a good ten minutes before finally Lassig saw this light up ahead, which was the guard shack that Brian had been in.

The two men pulled up near this shack and got out of their vehicles, and then Todd told Detective Lassig that this shack was where the guard, Brian Ruff, had last been stationed.

Later that same day, Lassig sat down in the living room of the house that was associated with that phone number.

And sitting across from him was a young woman named Kristi Bradley.

Her husband, Dale Bradley, was also a security guard at the Kennecott Mine where Brian worked.

Now, at the moment, Dale wasn't home, but it wasn't really clear when he would get home, and Lassig was really anxious to interview Kristie alone, so before her husband got back.

Delays really are starting to separate now.

It is looking a little better, but eastbound I-80 still pretty slow as you drive past the Kennecott ponds and head toward 5600 west.

It is still slow as you approach 7200 west over to 5600 west.

Heavier delays are a little more west than that, though.

You got it.

The old Kennecott as well worked there, but none of them built like a mine or found even a deposit of the size that you're looking for.

How come? What were they missing?

Well, if you walk the property, what happens is there's two things that stand out and different, you know, every geologist, excuse me, will have different focus or different, different opinions on, on what you have and where, where you should look and what, what activities you should have.

So that tells me that it's there and it's in that area.

That's in the West.

But when, and the project was operated by four or five operators before us and Kennecott, and it was USG, Noranda, Pegasus, Exxon.

When Exxon, there was a time when oil companies were actually exploring for minerals as well.