Copper is produced from the Chino mine located at Santa Rita, about fifteen miles east of Silver City. This mine, operated by Kennecott Copper Corporation, is the showpiece of the New Mexico minerals industry. The copper ore is low grade, containing only sixteen pounds a ton of the red metal, but the deposit is immense, allowing the mining of 22,500 tons a day. The Chino is by far the largest single mining operation in the state. A large concentrator and smelter are located at Hurley, about ten miles southwest of the pit. The Chino pit is a spectacular sight for its scenic setting and its sheer size. The deposit is located below the Kneeling Nun, a famous natural statue formed by the erosion of a rhyolite flow which caps a high mesa. The pit covers almost one square mile and is 800 feet deep. The mining is highly mechanized. Large rotary drills make blast holes twelve inches in diameter into which explosives are loaded. A single blast may break 100,000 tons of rock. The ore is loaded with 8-cubic-yard shovels into large trucks carrying from 25 to 65 tons each. The trucks transport the ore to an inclined skipway on the west end of the pit. The skip then carries the ore up to the train level where it is transferred into railroad cars for shipment to the mill. Waste rock, too low-grade to justify sending to the mill, is transported to the very top of the skip way, where it is trucked to the dumps. At Chino, much of the waste rock contains some copper. The amount is small, but a part of it can be recovered by leaching-percolating water down through the rock to dissolve the copper. At the bottom of the dumps, the copper-rich water is collected and sent through precipitating tanks containing scrap iron. The copper plates out on the iron, forming metallic copper. The dump-leaching program alone at Chino is a substantial enterprise. The concentrator and smelter at Hurley is the facility which reduces the low-grade ore into pure metal. The concentrator first crushes and grinds the ore, then recovers the copper-bearing minerals (principally chalcocite and chalcopyrite) by flotation. The concentrate of these copper sulfides is taken to the smelter to make metallic copper. North and west of the Chino mine are important deposits of zinc and lead. Two underground mines are now active: the Hanover of the New Jersey Zinc Company and the Kearney—Pewabic of American—Peru Mining Company. Although dwarfed by the Chino mine, these are important producers. [Illustration: (_Courtesy The Anaconda Co._) Man, dig this hole!... Jackpile open-pit uranium mine near Laguna] [Illustration: (_Courtesy Kennecott Copper Corp._) “Just scoop up copper ore, take it to the skipway....” up the side of the Chino Mine at Santa Rita]