That’s a Big Hole (8 Photos)

November 5, 2026

By Vidar

Holes so big you need a lookout to see the bottom

Most of these were dug by miners chasing diamonds, copper or gold, and some went down further than the Empire State Building is tall. One is a concrete drain that swallows a reservoir’s overflow, and one is a crater in the desert full of flames. Several have a lookout where you can stand at the edge.

💎 Mir Mine — Mirny, Russia 🇷🇺

The Mir diamond pit in Mirny is more than 525 meters (1,722 ft) deep and 1.2 kilometers across, and the town sits right beside it. Open-pit mining here ended in 2001, and work moved to tunnels underground.

💡 Legend Fact: A popular story says the hole can pull helicopters out of the sky, but no such accident has been confirmed.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Staselnik / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

🌀 The Ladybower Plughole — Derbyshire, England 🇬🇧

When Ladybower Reservoir is full, the extra water spills into two concrete bellmouths about 80 feet (24 meters) across and vanishes down a pipe under the dam. Locals call them the plugholes, and the road along the dam gives a clear view after heavy rain.

💡 History Fact: The reservoir, built between 1935 and 1943, flooded the villages of Ashopton and Derwent. King George VI opened it in 1945.

📷 Photo and cover crop: “The Plughole” by dave hudson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

⛏️ Bingham Canyon Mine — Salt Lake County, Utah, USA 🇺🇸

Copper has come out of Bingham Canyon since the early 1900s, and the pit is now over half a mile deep and over 2 miles across. A landslide in April 2013 buried the old visitor site, and a new visitor area opened in 2019.

💡 Visitor Fact: Rio Tinto sells tickets for its Kennecott Visitor Experience for $6 a person, and children under 5 go free.

📷 Photo: Farragutful / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🧪 The Berkeley Pit — Butte, Montana, USA 🇺🇸

This copper pit in Butte opened in 1955 and closed in 1982, when the pumps were switched off and groundwater started to fill it. The water is now acidic and part of a Superfund site, and from May to October visitors can look down from a viewing stand.

💡 Bird Fact: In late 2016 a huge flock of snow geese landed on the water, and thousands of them died.

📷 Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-71729 (public domain)

💎 The Big Hole — Kimberley, South Africa 🇿🇦

Miners dug this pit in Kimberley with picks and shovels from 1871 until mining ended in 1914. Today the hole is about 214 meters (700 ft) deep, and the turquoise water at the bottom hides about 40 meters of that.

💡 Site Fact: De Beers began a multi-year stabilization program at the Big Hole in 2026. The work is expected to finish in 2028 or 2029, and some areas of the site stay closed to the public until then.

📷 Photo: Rudolph Botha / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

🔥 Darvaza Gas Crater — Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan 🇹🇲

Gas has burned for decades in this desert crater, about 230 feet wide and 100 feet deep. The usual story is that Soviet drilling caused the collapse in 1971 and someone lit the gas, but how and when it really began is still unclear.

💡 Fire Fact: Turkmenistan wants the fire out, and in 2025 an official from the state gas company said the burning had dropped nearly threefold.

📷 Photo: Benjamin Goetzinger / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🥇 The Super Pit — Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia, Australia 🇦🇺

The Super Pit took shape in 1989 and is now about 3.5 kilometers long, 1.6 kilometers wide and over 675 meters deep. Anyone can walk up to the Super Pit Lookout from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., unless blasting nearby closes it.

💡 Gold Fact: Owner Northern Star Resources says a southern expansion could keep the mine going until 2034.

📷 Photo: Chuq / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0), cropped

🪨 Chuquicamata — Calama, Chile 🇨🇱

In the Atacama Desert near Calama, this copper pit has grown to 4.3 kilometers long and about 900 meters deep. In 2019 the digging moved to a new underground mine beneath it.

💡 Visitor Fact: Codelco restarted free tours in January 2025, with a stop at a lookout over the pit and the old mining camp, which people lived in from 1915 to 2007.

📷 Photo: Diego Delso / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0), cropped