Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpetre Works

Humberstone and Santa Laura mining is a hidden piece of history. It is a place owned by the mine owners, and people working and living here have no rights to it. This place has all the necessary architecture of a town, which we discussed below. We also discuss how this mine ends, and this place becomes a ghost town as there are no more people working or living there.

Humberstone and Santa Laura

• The two historic saltpetre refineries, Humberstone and Santa Laura, are Chile’s major mining areas. Because the refineries stopped in 1960, it is also known as a ghost town today
• Humberstone and Santa Laura are located 45 kilometres east of Iquique in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile’s Tarapacá Region. The Atacama Desert lies a few kilometres from Chile’s Peruvian and Bolivar borders
• Saltpetre is mined and refined in the Humberstone and Santa Laura
• The Chilean government took over the sector in 1932 after failing in 1930
• It was named after James “Santiago” Humberstone, a nitrate entrepreneur from the United Kingdom
• Peru and Bolivia lived in company towns where it was easy to identify and forge the communal pamperos culture. That Cutler is a clear display of the creativity and harmony and all about their revolutionary struggle for social justice that has an intense effect on social history 
• This is a corporation town; therefore, it has everything. The complex comprises a large swimming pool, a school with wooden tables, and a theatre with wooden chairs. Because the play has just concluded, there is a peculiar silence. A church may also be found here, where you can enjoy the stillness and tranquillity of Sunday prayers
• Workers live here with their families, and people’s homes have been transformed into miniature museums. The Humberstone’s art Deco lends a somewhat west coast, small-town Americana vibe
• The vivid letters that coloured the people’s day-to-day lives may be found here
• Santa Laura is the most overlooked by an industry that once made the Atacama Desert one of the world’s most lucrative locations
• The conflict broke out in 1878. The Pacific War broke out between Peru, Chile, and Bolivia, with Chile capturing all of the nitrate-producing areas

Former Saltpetre Works

• Humberstone and Santa Laura Works, two old saltpetre refineries in northern Chile, are two former saltpetre refineries. They were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005 to witness the historical significance of saltpetre mining in Chile and the cultural and social agenda that sprang up around it in the late 1800s.
• Due to the vulnerability of the decaying structures, the works were listed on the World Heritage List in Danger that same year but were removed in 2019
• Over 200 historic saltpetre mining sites may be seen at the Santa Laura Saltpetre and Humberstone Works, where employees from Chile, Peru, and Bolivia resided in company towns. Business towns, creating a distinct communal pamperos culture
• The Atacama Desert, which includes Humberstone and Santa Laura, is one of the driest in the world. Workers from Peru, Bolivia, and Chile worked for  60 years, beginning in 1880, to process the world’s largest saltpetre resources
• In Europe and the United States, this saltpetre generates sodium nitrate fertiliser, which is then applied to agricultural land to produce food
• Since it was used as fertiliser for agriculture and as a component of explosives in the early twentieth century, saltpetre was in great demand

The End of Humberstone and Santa Laura 

• This was when world war 1 broke out, and the British government stopped the export of saltpetre to Germany as it was well used for agriculture then
• Germany found an alternative to saltpetre, and they invented synthetic substitutes
• These synthetic substitutes were well used in preparing fertilisers. And suddenly, no one needed saltpetre nitrate anymore
• It was closed in 1930 and became a ghost town. There’s no one living or working here at the present day.

As this place is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its historical heritage, UNESCO is trying to reconstruct this area, and it has become one of the tourist places to visit. The houses of this town and the museum, school with desks, a church where you can feel the peace of Sunday worship, a theatre that is silent as the play is completed, and a lot more things attract the tourists from all over the world as it conveys the cultures of workers working in Humberstone and Santa Laura. 

Conclusion

In the above article, we learn about Humberstone and Santa Laura and how it was started as it was situated in words driest desert Atacama, where the people of Chile, Bolivia, and Peru worked for 60 years. Peru and Bolivian where it was easy to identify and forge the communal pamperos culture. That Cutler is a clear display of the creativity and harmony and all about their revolutionary struggle for social justice that has an intense effect on social history. Small museums had their speciality in showing the cultures of people living in that company town. This place is an example of Chile’s mining and its world heritage. After all of this ended, the place was rented out, and today it attracts tourists from all over the world.