Nearly 6,000 acres of old Arizona farmland once intended for a residential subdivision is on track to potentially become home to the first big new U.S. copper mine in more than a decade.
If all goes as planned, Ivanhoe Electric will begin construction of its Santa Cruz mine early next year and start selling copper cathodes to manufacturers before the end of 2028. That is a blink of an eye in mining, where the time between discoveries and production is often measured in decades.
