Sewell Mining Town

Sewell is an isolated mining town set up by a foreign company for copper mining.

Itīs located in central Chile on the slopes of the Andes, at an altitude between 2,000 and 2,250 metres. The camp was founded in 1904 by the Braden Copper Company to extract the copper in the mine, and, in 1915, it was named after the company's first president, Mr. Barton Sewell. In 1918, it already housed 14,000 people.

Following many years of active life and achieving the construction and exploitation of the largest underground mine in the world, in 1977 the company started moving families to the valley and soon after the camp was being dismantled.

Copper production . Named after individual people . Andes .

Reviews

Werner Huber (Austria):
We visited Sewell in February 2008 encountering some difficulties. There is a homepage (www.sewell.cl) for sewell by CODELCO, the state owned company, which runs several mines, amongs them El Teniente, to which the mining town of Sewell belongs.
This page is of limited use as rather than telling you how to get there, what it costs, etc, it refers to a company called VLT which has the monopoply of taking people there. This is done either by bus on Fro, Sat and Sun for approx 45 USD pP or on all other days as private tour for 144 USD pP.
The committment that CODELCO seems to have with UNESCO is that Sewell as a seperate entity from the mine has to become profitable entity from its tourism engagements within a rather short timeline, otherwise CODELCO might step out. We have been told, that the number of tourist to come to Sewell for the reasons UNESCO declared it a world heritage is already declining after an initial peak, people are more interested in the actual mine rather than in an aboandoned mining town.

Finally one has to understand that you see today only a fragment of the initial mining town, large parts, in particular the part where the american settlements were has been pulled down when the town had to be abandoned due to pollution problems.
The restauration efforts which happened so far are rather disappointing, if they continue at that speed, the whole thing is gone within a few years.

I have to stress however, that despite all the issues above it is absolutely worth seing and we had a very good and comprehensive tour which we much apprecheated.
Visit it as long as it exits.

UNESCO should be much more rigid with states aor companies like CODELCO and ask for a deeper comittments and sould pu the place on the endangered list immediately.
 
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I have been visiting the site in November 2006. It's relatively difficult to get as only organised tours are allowed to view the site as it is still a part of "El Teniente" Copper Mine, and I must say this tour costs money. The tour can be organised from Rancagua (the closest big city) or from Santiago. The site itself is truely remarkable, a complete early XX cent. town (with church, casino, cinema, hospital and residential houses) located on slopes of rocky mountain - some 2.200 m above sea level. Its also called the "city of stairs" thanks to a number of stairs scattered throuhgout the city. Anyway visit recommended for full day (tour includes also visiting the copper mine inside as well).
 
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mI NOMBRE ES HALEX VALENZUELA, SOY POSEEDOR DE UNA COLECCION DE MAS DE 3000 NEGATIVOS FOTOGRAFICOS DE SEWELL MUCHOS DE LOS CUALES FUERON LA BASE PARA PEDIR A LA UNESCO, SE NOMBRARA A SEWELL COMO SITIO DE LA HUMANIDAD.
MI INTERES ES CONTACTAR CON GENTES QUE GUSTEN DE ESTA ACTIVIDAD PARA INTERCAMBIAR ANTECEDENTES HISTORICOS Y CONTACTOS CON ANTIGUOS HABITANTES DE ESTA HERMOSA CIUDAD.
 


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