Sewell Mining Town
Sewell
Interesting facts
- Barton Sewell, the company executive the town was named after in 1915, died in New York that same year without ever having set foot in Chile.
- Before it took his name, the settlement was known as El Establecimiento and later as El Molino.
- On 8 August 1944 an avalanche from the slopes above the town killed 102 people, one of several hazards alongside earthquakes and mine blasts.
- In June 1945 a fire outside the mine sent smoke into El Teniente, killing 355 workers in what became known as the Smoke Tragedy and prompting new safety laws.
- The narrow-gauge railway to Rancagua, completed in 1911, climbed about 1,500 metres over some 70 kilometres and was the only way supplies reached the town.
- Streets ran horizontally and were left unpaved because of harsh winters, while staircases climbed vertically between the levels; no cars ever circulated.
- Demolition of the emptied town was halted at the end of the 1980s, and about 50 restored buildings survive today.
- In 1999 Chile's College of Architects named Sewell one of the country's ten most important urban works.
- UNESCO's World Heritage Committee inscribed Sewell at its meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 13 July 2006.
- Since 2014 former residents and their descendants have marked a Day of the Sewellinos every 29 April, the date taken as the town's founding in 1905.
Why it is worth it
Sewell is a company town built where no town should fit: on a steep mountainside of the Chilean Andes, at between 2,000 and 2,250 metres, above the El Teniente copper mine — the largest underground copper mine in the world. The Braden Copper Company began building it in the first years of the 20th century — UNESCO gives 1905 — to house the workers of the mine, and named it after the company's first president, Barton Sewell. The terrain was too steep for wheeled vehicles, so the town was laid out without streets for cars: a great central staircase climbs from the old railway station, and the rest of the town is reached by stairs and paths, which gave it the name "city of staircases".
The buildings are timber, painted in vivid green, yellow, red and blue, and arranged along the stairs and around small irregular squares planted with ornamental trees. From a distance the town looks like a set of coloured blocks stacked on a bare grey slope, and close up it has the orderly, planned character of a settlement built by one company for one purpose. At its peak around 1960 some 16,000 people lived here, supplied by a railway that ran up from Rancagua.
After Chilean copper was nationalised in 1971, the workers and their families were gradually moved down to the valley, and the town emptied. It was declared a national monument in 1998, and in 2006 UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site as an outstanding example of a company mining town. Today the town houses the Museum of Large-Scale Copper Mining, with nine themed halls on mining technology and on everyday life in Sewell.
Getting there
Sewell lies in the commune of Machalí, about 27 km from the town in a straight line and some 60 km east of Rancagua. The nearest international airport is Santiago (SCL), about 85 km away in a straight line. The site is not open to private vehicles: visits are made only with tour operators from Santiago and Rancagua.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Sewell is an uninhabited Chilean mining town located on the slopes of the Andes in the commune of Machalí in Cachapoal Province, Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins Region, at an altitude of between 2,000 and 2,250 metres. In 2006, it was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is known as a former company town, developed by Braden Copper Company for housing the workers associated with the operations of El Teniente, the largest underground copper mine in the world.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
-34.08500, -70.38250per Wikidata