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Humberstone Theatre

historia teatrugaleriadane techniczneoryginalne wyposażenie

ważne wydarzenia

(więcej)1882 | Construction

historia

Humberstone is a former mining town in the Atacama Desert, a few hundred kilometres from Chile's borders with Peru and Bolivia.

It was named after James Humberstone, a British chemical engineer who emigrated to South America in 1875.

He made his fortune from saltpetre, which was dug out of caliche - the nitrate-rich crust of the desert - and used to make fertilizer.

 

For a while in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, almost all the saltpetre in the world came from the Atacama Desert. It was known as "white gold" and was in huge demand in the industrialising countries of Europe, which needed fertilizer to help grow food for their rapidly expanding populations.

 

"During the golden age of saltpetre, from 1880 to 1930, it was monumentally important," says Julio Pinto, a historian at the University of Santiago in the Chilean capital. "It accounted for between 60% and 80% of Chilean exports and between 40% and 60% of Chile's fiscal revenue.

 

Humberstone was one of dozens of saltpetre towns, all of them stuck out in the vast and inhospitable Atacama. Founded in 1872, it was originally known as La Palma and in its heyday was home to around 3,500 people.

 

When World War One broke out, the British blockaded exports of saltpetre to Germany. That prompted the Germans to look for alternatives, and they invented synthetic substitutes that could be used to make fertilizer. Suddenly, no-one needed Chilean nitrate anymore and the industry collapsed.

 

Humberstone is now a United Nations World Heritage Site. UNESCO is working to restore it for future visitors to this arid, mineral-rich and history-rich corner of South America.

 

 

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