Sewell

This article is about the city of Sewell in Chile. For additional meanings, see Sewell (disambiguation) .

Sewell
Coordinates: 34 ° 5 ′  S , 70 ° 23 ′  W Sewell​ Sewell on the map of Chile
Basic data
Country	Chile
region	Región del Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins
Commune	Machalí
Residents	0
Detailed data
surface	21.2 ha
height	2150  m
Waters	Estero Teniente, Estero Coya
Website	www.sewell.cl
since 1999 without residents
Below left are the houses of the remaining residential town with their characteristic bright colors. At the top right the iron and steel works with the rail ramp at the end of the tunnel to the pit, stone mill and concentrator system. (Picture 2008)
The partially well-preserved mining town is now only populated by tourists.
Sewell, around 1930 / 40s

Sewell (Spanish pronunciation [ suwe̞l ]) was an industrial city in central Chile and is now a World Heritage Site of UNESCO .

geography

It is located about 40 km east of Rancagua in the Andes .

history

Emergence

Sewell's beginnings in 1909: The large hall in the center of the plant was the first stone mill. The ore deposit with the pit is located in the mountain that can be seen behind it on the right.

Sewell is about 3 km from the world's largest copper ore deposit. Copper was mined there as early as prehistoric times . The first documented mentions of mining date from 1760. Although not very productive, mining was operated by local entrepreneurs until the end of the 19th century, despite the inhospitable location in the Andes south-east of Santiago de Chile . On April 29, 1905, the American Braden Copper Company began large-scale mining operations in what is now the El Teniente copper mine . The Braden Copper Company had already set up its administration in Graneros and from there built a road through the mountains to the mine in order to be able to transport material and machines to the hut to be built. Sewell was the company town of this first hut. Both together were initially referred to as "El Molino".

Namesake

With this advertisement it was announced on March 18, 1915 in the daily newspaper "La Aurora" that the management of the Braden Copper Co. henceforth referred to their ironworks "El Molino" with the name "Sewell".

The emerging city got its name from the chairman of the Braden Copper Company , Barton Sewell, who died in New York in the same year , and although he was never in Chile himself , he had always supported William Braden's idea of investing in El Teniente .

development

The company town Sewell around 1922.

With the copper boom that followed, the city grew and offered its residents a level of comfort, such as a cinema and a bowling alley, which was amazing for the Chilean standards of the time. Sewell location was the hut of the copper mine El Teniente . Between 1905 and 1906, a large ore mill was built on a mountain slope opposite the pit, which was able to process 250 tons of ore a day. The mined ore was transported directly to the mill from the pit by cable car . The energy to operate this conveyor system and the mill was generated in a separate power plant, also built by the Braden Copper Company . Originally, the mine workers lived in small camps in the vicinity of the mine, until they were combined to form the industrial town of Sewell in March 1915. From 1915 to 1969, up to 15,000 people lived here, often in cramped conditions.

On February 7, 1959, a serious railway accident occurred near Sewell when a passenger train derailed. 33 people died, 55 were also injured.

Decline

In 1967 the mining company was partially nationalized. In the following three years, the Chilean state invested around a quarter of a billion US dollars in expanding the mine and the smelting works. At the same time, in order to reduce operating costs, the company began to liquidate the company's settlements in the mountains, including Sewell, and to relocate the staff with the families. After the first 1,100 houses for this purpose in Rancagua were completed in autumn 1969, the dismantling of Sewell began.

Today Sewell is a ghost town . The remaining buildings are under monument protection and, as far as possible, serve the plant administration. The immediately adjacent steelworks is still in operation.

World Heritage

Sewell has been a national monument of Chile since 1998 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2006. There is a museum about the history of the city.

Web links

Commons : Sewell  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Sewell website
• Entry on the UNESCO World Heritage Center website ( English and French ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Francisco Camus Infanta, Alfredo Enrione Llaumet: Estudios geotécnicos aplicados al sistema de hundimiento por bloques (block caving) . In: Revista Geológica de Chile . No. 1 . Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería, 1973, ISSN  0716-0208 , OCLC 3575257 , p. 1–12 ( andeangeology.equipu.cl [accessed April 12, 2015]).
2. ↑ Codelco Chile (ed.): Memoria Anual 2015 . Santiago de Chile April 2016 ( codelco.com [PDF; 9.0 MB ; accessed on April 15, 2016]).
3. ^ Codelco Chile División El Teniente: Estudio impacto ambiental "Proyecto Nuevo Nivel Mina" Codelco-Chile . Informe de caracterización de línea de base de arqueología N ° 2. 2010 ( e-seia.cl [PDF; accessed on April 7, 2015]).
4. ↑ ^{a b} Alejandro Fuenzalida Grandón : El trabajo i la vida en el Mineral "El Teniente" . Soc. Imprenta-Litografía Barcelona, ​​Santiago de Chile 1919 ( memoriachilena.cl [accessed January 18, 2015]).
5. ↑ El Cobre . In: Sociedad Nacional de Míneria (ed.): 100 años de minería en Chile . 1st edition. Sociedad Editora Lead Ltda., Santiago de Chile 1983, p.  123-198 ( memoriachilena.cl [accessed May 10, 2015]).
6. ^ Peter WB Semmens: Catastrophes on rails. A worldwide documentation. Transpress, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-344-71030-3 , p. 162.
7. ^ J. Douglas Porteous: Urban transplantation in Chile . In: The Geographical Review . tape LXII , no. 4 , October 1972, p. 455-478 .