Gadsden Purchase

A couple of days ago, Tuesday following Memorial Weekend, we made a shopping run in to Silver City.  On the way, we passed a huge open pit mine, but didn't stop to check it out.  Wednesday, on our way to Alpine, we did stop and read a few informative signs about the mine and the local area.

The picture doesn't begin to show the immensity of the open pit.  The trucks making their way on the winding road in the pit cost 2.5 million each and are loaded by a shovel that takes 80,000 pound bites.  It's a copper mine, one of the oldest continually mined sites in the USA.  Once when the mine site was still part of Mexico, before we purchased the land, copper was mined there and shipped to the Mexico Mint in Mexico City.  That was around 1806.   Sometimes dates surprise me.  Mexican ties to the southwest, New Mexico and Arizona are very real, and gringoes like me need to remember that.