A number of factors were important in allowing the company to fast track the project ...
Copper Mountain , in southern British Columbia , is just a three-hour drive east of Vancouver and 15km south of the town of Princeton . The area is no stranger to mining , having nearly 100 years of copper , gold and silver production . What ’ s changing is the scale of the
“ operation . In 1905 , the British Columbia Copper Company made several attempts to get a mine running ; but success wasn ’ t achieved until Granby Mining took over in 1927 . Over the next 30 years , Granby mined 30 million tons , by underground methods , at a head grade of about 1.3 percent copper . In the 1960s , Newmont Mining explored the area and discovered the Ingerbelle deposit immediately to the west of Granby ’ s operation , but on the other side of the Similkameen River .
Newmont began open pit production on Ingerbelle in 1972 – initially at 16,000 tons / day , later expanding to 20,000t / day . In 1980 , Newmont built a conveyer system across the river and established open pits on Copper Mountain . Newmont sold the property to Princeton Mining Corp ., in 1988 . Princeton expanded operations to 24,000t / day and falling copper prices and increasing stripping requirements resulted in the mine closing at the end of 1996 .
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