Lavender Pit

The Lavender Pit is an open pit copper mine located in Cochise County Arizona, Bisbee, Arizona. It is located in the near vacinity of the very rich copper deposit called the Copper Queen Mine. Phelps Dodge Corporation started digging the mine in 1951, and needed to extract 46 million tons of overburden before reaching the valuable ore. It is estimated that over a billion tons of copper was mined from the pit, with good amounts of gold, silver and lead also being extracted. Bisbee Blue turquoise was also a by-product of this mining activity. Because of the very hard nature of the host rock, this open pit has much steeper sides than other open pit copper mines in the southwest area. The pit covers an area of 300 acres, and is 900 feet deep. Mining operations in the pit ended in 1974, and remains idle to this day. Vast tonnage of dump rock are spread all around Bisbee and the southeastern Mule Mountains area. This dump material in concert with the large open hole of the pit is considered an ecological disaster by many, but for its time, Phelps Dodge Corporation was within federal guide lines on mining codes.

Looking southeast-ward down into the pit. Notice the brown water acid pond.

Looking southwest-ward across the pit, with the southern peaks of the Mule Mountains in the background.