Search Results: Extractive Site
One of a few major oilfields in the country that have been set aside as reserves, to be used only in the event of a national crisis or shortage. Called "naval" reserves, as they were established initially as fuel supplies for naval ships. This reserve site was made...
This is one of the most productive oil fields in the country, and for 86 years it was owned by the federal government as part of the National Petroleum Reserve. In 1998, it was sold to Occidental petroleum for $3.65 billion, the largest federal divestiture in American...
An underground nuclear test took place at this site in 1973, to investigate the possibility of using nuclear explosions to extract natural gas from low grade deposits. The test, the last in the Plowshare Program, called Rio Blanco, was performed by the Atomic Energy...
The Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site is the location of a 1967 underground nuclear explosion, conducted to test the viability of using a nuclear device to aid in natural gas extraction. It was part of the Plowshare Program, the program to develop peaceful uses of nuclear...
An underground nuclear detonation took place at this site in 1969, to investigate the possibility of using nuclear explosions to extract natural gas from low grade deposits. The test, a Plowshare Program experiment called Project Rulison, was performed by the Atomic...
Two adjacent uranium mills operated here and have been mostly erased, as part of the federal government’s Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Act (UMTRA). What is know today as Slick Rock East was the first mill here, built in 1931, and used to extract radium salts and...
This is a hazardous waste dump now operated by Clean Harbors, the largest hazardous waste company in the country. The 320 acre facility accepts Class 1 wastes from petroleum-related industries, such as soils contaminated by chemicals from extraction and refining...
Dow rivals DuPont as the nation's largest chemical company. Though headquartered in Michigan, half the company's manufacturing assets are at six sites in Texas. Of these, Freeport, on the coast forty miles south of Houston, is the first and largest. Also called Dow...
The California Portland Cement Company's Mojave Plant employs 150 people to extract limestone and produce cement at this 9,000 acre site. The plant opened in 1955, after a nine mile rail spur connecting the site to the main line at Mojave was built by the company. The...
This site consists of a square mile mining pit with unusual erosional features, now a State Historic Park, and the restored historic town of North Bloomfield adjacent to it. The Malakoff mine was created mostly in the 1870's using the hydraulic mining technique....
This active mine is the second biggest open pit copper mine in the world, slightly smaller than the Chuquicamata pit in Chile. Digging started in 1904, and the hole is now half a mile deep and more than two miles wide. It is expected to be enlarged until the ore runs...
One of the largest gypsum mines in the United States. At one point as much as 10% of the Nation's gypsum was extracted from this site, which is owned by the U.S. Gypsum company. The mining complex is connected to the Plaster City plant by a 20-mile long narrow gauge...
Foundations and scattered debris indicate the site of a major gypsum plant and community of 1,000, once located in this remote region 20 miles from the nearest settlement. The U.S. Gypsum company established the town and plant to process gypsum extracted from nearby...
This 30 acre park, constructed on a landfill between 1988-1992, has several earthworks and land art pieces on it, designed by the park designers, George Hargreaves, Peter Richards, and Michael Oppenheimer. A series of mounds, a series of poles, and other berms and...
One of the largest gold mines in the country, the Mesquite Mine, located in Imperial County, in the southeastern corner of the state, extracts over 100,000 ounces of gold annually (valued at over $100 million). The mine, which abuts the Chocolate Mountains Gunnery...
In 1994, this was the largest salt mine in North America, and the second largest in the world. 300 people worked within the 6,000 acres of excavated space, a thousand feet below ground, extracting salt from a natural deposit for use as road salt, table salt, and in...
In a state dominated by some of the largest hydropower projects in the world, the big coal-fired power plant at Centralia is an anomaly. The plant was built in 1972, and is fueled by coal mined in the nearby hills. It produces 1,330 megawatts, and is blamed for...
Unocal operated this $650 million oil shale plant from 1985 to 1990, and it has sat idle for most of the following decade. Oil shale was considered a significant source of energy into the 1980's, and geologic formations under western Colorado and eastern Utah were...