Globe AZ AZER (1946)

Interesting the mines are still operating! Base-metal mines in the US are pretty much defunct.

I lived for a while a block away from a street in an old industrial section of my Kentucky town that had a CSX track running down the middle of it. I used to enjoy going out at night to watch them pass.

I've been through the Globe/Miami area 3 times over the past 20 years and the mines have been consistently busy. I could be wrong on what they're mining, the miner who fixed my tire mentioned working with some sort of liquid slurry. (What are the mining at Round Mountain? That's still very busy)

Trains running down the middle of streets still fascinate me, even though I'm sure its dangerous and slow.

Round Mtn is gold. As a good first approximation, for the last couple of decades or so the only US mines that could make money, much less start up from scratch, were precious-metal operations. Globe/Miami was traditionally copper, a base metal, but maybe they're shifted their emphasis to precious metals--some of the old Cu-producing areas, like Ruth (Ely), have done so. The "slurry" might be the gold-bearing slimes from the cyanide process.

I assumed 'base' referred to a property (e.g., less refining) and that seems to be largely the case from what I could find in a quick web search. I came across a Minnesota site that says there is a shortage of copper and suggest that it is being mined heavily there: www.miningminnesota.com/metals_base.php

Ah. Yes, as that link indicates, "base" in traditional metallurgy is the opposite of "precious"--presumably a similar usage to the old-fashioned meaning of "base" as "lowborn" or even "reprehensible" ("base motives.") The quote about the US being no longer self-sufficient in Cu is a bit disingenuous, however--domestic producers of Cu can't compete with imports, in large part due to labor and environmental costs! And sure, those environmental, health and safety, and wage regs are a big improvement over the bad old days, but--No one wants to pay enough for domestic copper! There are always tradeoffs-- The same phenomenon occurs over and over again in the traditionally industrialized world. I noted elsewhere that the biggest tungsten mine in the US, outside Bishop, CA, shut down in 2000, not because there's no tungsten left, but because it can't compete with Chinese imports! Here's my album: www.ipernity.com/doc/289859/album/431275?view=2

My understanding is that one of the hazards of the proposed TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade agreement is that it would override environmental regulations and thus open up mining that we have closed because of being too hazardous. Its difficult choices.