Newest U. S. Mine

The pictures at top and bottom of this page illustrate why the U.S. can't expand copper production fast enough to meet its needs--four years elapsed between them. It took that long for Phelps Dodge to behead a mountain and lay bare the mile-long, 400-ft. thick clay ore body (below) for exploitation. This week Phelps Dodge is putting finishing touches on this new $35,000,000 Morenci mine in Arizona; next month it will start to smelt 6,500 tons of copper a month.

Since the 1942 U.S. copper deficiency is estimated at 770,000 tons, Morenci comes in none too soon. OPM's copper curtailment order went into effect last week, cut off all supplies from manufacturers of 100-odd copper gadgets after Jan. 1.

Frontiersman Robert Metcalf first stumbled on the green-stained rocks of the Morenci bed 70 years ago. Its exposed ore was so rich it was "quarried rather than mined." But by 1932, after yielding 1,800,000,000 lb. of copper, the high-grade open veins were played out, the underground low-grade (1.06%) ore too costly to work for a 6-c- copper market. Morenci became another ghost town.

In 1937 the price of copper went to 16-c-. Phelps Dodge dusted off long-drawn openpit plans, issued $28,000,000 in convertible 3 1/2% debentures, began moving the 46,000,000-ton mountaintop.

Last week ghostly Morenci was booming. Its main street, Burro Alley, had been widened, its houses repaired. The railroad has been converted from narrow to standard gauge; natural gas is tapped in 100 miles from the West Texas pipeline; there are new power and water systems. Besides opening the mine, Phelps Dodge built a 25,000-ton concentrator, a primary and secondary crusher, a larger smelter.

Today copper is 12-c- a lb., not 16-c-. Yet the Morenci ores, though low-grade, will still yield a profit. When production starts, nine 125-ton electric locomotives will haul 75,000 tons of rock from the pit each day, dump 50,000 tons of waste into the canyons, spill the rest into ore bins. Each ton of ore will yield 21 lb. of copper--a daily smelter production of around 260 tons.

Last month OPM decided that was not enough. To Phelps Dodge it proposed an 80% expansion to bring Morenci's production to 10,000 tons monthly, some 13% of total current U.S. production. Defense Plant Corp. would finance the new ore-handling and refining equipment ($28,000,000). Phelps Dodge had figured Morenci's vast reserves would take 28-30 years to extract. Now it may have to figure on a briefer future.

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