Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works

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Humberstone Ruins, 1992

The Humberstone and Santa Laura saltpeter works are two former Chile nitrate mining plants located in the municipality of Pozo Almonte in the Tarapacá region in Chile . They are listed in the UNESCO World Heritage Site . The saltpeter works in the desert have been in decline since 1961.

Both works reflect the grandeur and contrast that Chile experienced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In its heyday, Santa Laura had 425 residents, while Humberstone had more than 3,500 residents.

geography

The saltpeter works are located 48 km east of Iquique in the Región de Tarapacá in the Atacama Desert .

history

The Santa Laura saltpeter works were founded in 1872 by the Guillermo Wendell nitrate extraction company. At that time the region was still part of Peru . In the same year James Thomas Humberstone founded the Compañía de Nitratos del Perú (Nitrate Society of Peru) with the Oficina La Palma . Since 1883, after the Saltpeter War , the Tarapacá region has belonged to Chile. As early as 1889, the Humberstone works were one of the largest saltpeter works in Chile. At the beginning of the 1920s, the saltpetre market collapsed after Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch introduced the ammonia synthesis developed in Germany . Many workers were laid off; up to 3700 people lived around the mine. The saltpeter works continued to operate, but as the sale of saltpeter became increasingly difficult, Humberstone was closed in 1961. The Santa Laura saltpeter works, which had to close its gates in 1960, suffered a similar fate.

Today the two works are ghost towns exposed to the harsh climate of the Atacama Desert . The theft of wooden beams also contributed a lot to the destruction. Some of the buildings are in acute danger of collapsing. The rusty large industrial complexes are now a popular tourist destination in the desert. There is an open air museum there.

On January 16, 1970, the works were declared National Monuments of Chile. In July 2005, both works were the World Heritage Site of UNESCO declared simultaneously on the Red List of World Heritage in Danger set. In 2019, the World Heritage Committee decided at its 43rd meeting to remove the site from the Red List, as measures to improve the situation have been taken in the meantime, such as the introduction of guarding, the definition of protection zones and the development of a protection strategy.

Picture gallery

  • Entrance to Humberstone

  • Workers' housing

  • Workers' housing

  • theatre

  • Street

  • Swimming pool

  • Tower with clock

Movie and TV

The town was used as a filming location for the episode Welcome to Humberstone of the television series On the Move and for an episode of the television series Jolly Joker .

Web links

Commons : Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works site (Chile), removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger. UNESCO World Heritage Center, July 2, 2019, accessed July 6, 2019 .

Coordinates: 20 ° 12 ′ 0 ″  S , 69 ° 48 ′ 0 ″  W.