From Unbelievable Wealth to World Heritage Status | dare2go (2024)

The Saltpeter Extraction Works of Humberstone and Santa Laura in Chile

Chile has very few UNESCO World Heritage sites compared to neighbouring countries. In the far north of the country you will find the Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works, which were large mining and processing sites.

These are two of the best preserved examples of a former network of over 200 similar saltpeter mines, which spread across the Atacama Desert of Chile. Most were not as large as Humberstone, and didn’t have as many social amenities.

The History of Saltpeter in the Atacama Desert

Saltpeter derives from a natural process, where ocean fog and sea spray drift inland and settle on the hot and dry desert floor. The Atacama region, from southern Peru into most of northern Chile, still has the ideal conditions for the natural occurrence of saltpeter.

During the late 19^th to mid 20^th centuries, saltpeter was in high demand. Sodium nitrate was used worldwide as a fertiliser and to produce explosives. For Chile it meant new, enormous riches of unprecedented proportions. But the land with the rich deposits wasn’t always part of Chile.

The Spanish empire just defined the Atacama desert as the northern border of the General Captaincy of Chile. [Quote WikiPedia ]

The borders between countries in this desert, formerly considered as near worthless, weren’t clearly defined by the occupying Spaniards. Thus Bolivia, Peru, and Chile all laid claim to this region. For Bolivia it was the only access to the ocean and of high importance. Initially Chilean mining companies accepted Peru’s and Bolivia’s claims to part of the Atacama and negotiated mining rights with their governments.

But the congress in Bolivia never ratified these contracts and instead demanded a higher tax than agreed upon. This finally led to the “War of the Pacific” [1879 – 1883] and a huge land grab by the victorious Chileans. (In this post I don’t want to go further into this well documented history. Please read more about it on Wikipedia: here & here , or google).

The demand for the nitrate was so enormous that it soon became evident that the natural reserves would quickly run out. This inspired the development of synthetic nitrate in the 1930s , which in turn ended the demand for Chile’s saltpeter. Despite efforts to streamline the process, the site in Humberstone was finally shut down in 1960s.

Nowadays this region is still the centre of mining activities on an unbelievable scale. Chile and Peru combined provide around 40% of the world’s copper production (2014 statistics). Copper accounts for almost half of Chile’s exports. The region is also rich in lithium deposits – with the current push for electric cars this is the mineral of the future as the best battery technology is based on lithium cells.

The Pioneers of Chile’s North

The Atacama Desert, like all deserts, is a harsh and unforgiving environment. Up in the far north of Chile it hardly rains at all. Water comes from few rivers, which bring snow and glacier melt from the Andes down to the plains. Even today, with all the mining activities, it is a sparsely populated region and most supplies come from Santiago de Chile, some 2,000 kilometres away.

Please click thumbnails below for a larger photo with description.

When the first mines were developed, it was even more difficult to source everything they needed; from construction material to machinery to goods of daily life. The World Heritage listing acknowledges the achievements of the early Pampinos [pampa inhabitants]. At Humberstone you find several rooms in former workers’ cottages, filled with exhibits showcasing how inventive the miners were at producing what they needed on-site.

There were examples of handmade tools; wooden casting moulds *) for pipes, and even toilet bowls; and simple children’s toys made from wire and empty tins. They riveted their own steam boilers and other large machinery on-site.

Humberstone was so large that its size justified a club for engineers, a large church, and its very own theatre – which much have been quite feat. They also had an on-site hospital, a school, a swimming pool, and a tennis court.

Nevertheless, it was a difficult life in an unforgiving environment. All of the mines were rather isolated and far removed from services and supplies. On our way to San Pedro de Atacama we came past a big, old graveyard – shockingly it contained a large number of infant graves.

The soil, which contains the saltpeter, was processed and bagged on-site. Most extraction facilities had big industrial complexes attached to them. Santa Laura is an excellent and well preserved example of this.

The site of Santa Laura conserves the remains of the industrial installations that were used for saltpeter processing such as industrial installations and equipment, including the only leaching shed and a saltpeter grinder that remain intact today, installations for manufacturing iodine, for energy production and buildings such as the administration house and the main square. The Humberstone site contains the attributes that express the quality of urban settlements, such as the living quarters, public spaces and the regular grid pattern of the Camp, with a main square around which communal buildings are clustered.[Quote World Heritage Listing ]

Summary of our Visit at this World Heritage Site

The site of the former Saltpeter Extraction Works of Humberstone and Santa Laura is the second World Heritage listed industrial site we have visited in South America. Last year we saw Uruguay’s latest addition to the WHC list – the Angus Meat Works of ‘OXO’ fame .

Quite often we feel that such sites are bypassed by international tourists because they don’t purvey a sense of magnificence or breathtaking beauty like, for example, colonial cities. Nevertheless, the few industrial sites included in the UNESCO list are usually of high historic value and provide an acute insight into living and working conditions at the beginning of the “Industrial Revolution”. They can teach us so much about the life of our grand- or great-grand-parents…

Please click thumbnails below for a larger photo with description.

First of all: if you can, visit on a weekday! We went on a Saturday and it felt rather busy. Not overly crowded, but there were preparations for some festivities later in the day…

Early morning should give you cooler temperatures and less harsh light for photography. We arrived around 11am, later than we had planned. Therefore, we didn’t go across to Santa Laura for a closer inspection.

You can book bus tours from Iquique. Most seem to be small groups in Mercedes Sprinter buses.

The site is rather large. Wear solid shoes, there is old steel trash lying around and the ground is very dusty. Be prepared to walk some distances to see everything. Sun protection is advisable.

Overlanders: we parked along the dirt road, a bit away from the site, and had a quiet night. There is no shade though!