Kennecott Mill

Our tour of the Kennecott Mill actually started at the bottom and we worked our way up through the 13 stories (they call it 14 stories, but no body has 13 stories). The building itself is pretty incredible. It is the tallest wooden structure in the world and the timber framing is both amazing and beautiful.

We walked up from the bottom, but it makes more sense to explain it from the top down. The actual mines are up the mountainside and out of sight of the mills. We didn't make it up to the mines, but there are 70 miles of tunnels in the mountains around Kennecott. Most of the copper ore was brought to the mill by tram. The empty trams buckets were also used by workers to ride the several miles back up to the mines.

At the top of the mill the ore was first sent through a crusher, then it was sorted for the first time. The very high-grade ore was sent careening down a ramp all the way to the train at the bottom of the mill. Everything else was sorted again. The rest of the mill is a series of chutes, shaker tables, crushers and more sorting.

Wide canvas belts were used to turn oval wheels that operated the shaker tables. Here the ore was separated by size. These shaker tables were on several levels of the mill. In one place a chute deposited ore onto a conveyor belt. Someone sat at the bottom of the chutes and could stop the conveyor and pick out ore that was too large after it came out of the crusher. If he didn't catch it, the large chunk could block up the system further down the line.

By the time the ore reached the bottom of the mill, it had been sorted and most had been loaded into railcars. It was shipped the 196 miles to Cordova, loaded onto ships and sent to Washington State for processing.

The very lowest grade ore was moved overhead by conveyor to the chemical processing building that was located on the other side of the road and the rail line.

Kennecott Mill

At the top of the mill and the end
of the tram line

High grade ore traveled down this ramp from level 12 to the trains below.

Shaker tables used to sort the copper ore.