Potrerillos is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

in the interior of Atacama Region,

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

. Potrerillos became established as

mining camp A mining community, also known as a mining town or a mining camp, is a community that houses miners. Mining communities are usually created around a mine or a quarry. Historical mining communities Australia * Ballarat, Victoria * Bendig ...

in the 1920s by Andes Copper Mining Company. There is an airport in the area, the

Potrerillos Airport Potrerillos may refer to: * Potrerillos, Chile, a former mining camp in Atacama Region, Chile * Potrerillos (caldera), Atacama Region, Chile * Potrerillos, Cortés, a municipality in Honduras * Potrerillos, El Paraíso, a municipality in Honduras ...

Potrerillos Mine

One of Chile's Gran Mineria, the

copper porphyry Porphyry copper deposits are copper ore bodies that are formed from hydrothermal fluids that originate from a voluminous magma chamber several kilometers below the deposit itself. Predating or associated with those fluids are vertical dikes of ...

mine was identified and developed by William Burford Braden. The mine was active from 1927 until 1959.

Geology

Located 12 km east of the Sierra del Castillo fault, the area consists of

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 143.1 Mya. ...

Lower Cretaceous Lower may refer to: * ''Lower'' (album), 2025 album by Benjamin Booker * Lower (surname) * Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) * Lower Wick Gloucestershire, England See also * Nizhny {{Disambiguation ...

marine and

volcanic A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often fo ...

host rocks. During the

Late Eocene The Priabonian is, in the International Commission on Stratigraphy, ICS's geologic timescale, the latest age (geology), age or the upper stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Eocene epoch (geology), Epoch or series (stratigraphy), Series. It spans ...

, the Porfido Cobre

intrusion In geology, an igneous intrusion (or intrusive body or simply intrusion) is a body of intrusive igneous rock that forms by crystallization of magma slowly cooling below the surface of the Earth. Intrusions have a wide variety of forms and com ...

induced Cu-Mo mineralization. The

supergene A supergene is a chromosomal region encompassing multiple neighboring genes that are inherited together because of close genetic linkage, i.e. much less recombination than would normally be expected. This mode of inheritance can be due to genomic ...

oxidation zone "is dominated by

malachite Malachite () is a copper Carbonate mineral, carbonate hydroxide mineral, with the chemical formula, formula Basic copper carbonate, Cu2CO3(OH)2. This opaque, green-banded mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often for ...

and

azurite Azurite or '' Azure spar'Krivovichev V. G.'' Mineralogical glossary. Scientific editor A. G. Bulakh. — St.Petersburg: St.Petersburg Univ. Publ. House. 2009. — 556 p. — ISBN 978-5-288-04863-0. ''(in Russian)'' is a soft, deep-blue copp ...

in and around the Porfido Cobre

stock Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the Share (finance), shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporatio ...

Potrerillos Library

In 1956, the people residing in Potrerillos, which consisted of mostly Americans, requested that the company Andes Copper Company approve a project for starting a library. The company approved the project and quickly a committee of camp women began asking the Potrerillos residents for donations. The project was on its way. The company made a vacant house available for the trial library. The library had over 1,000 donations and the organization of the library would be led by a previous librarian. They classified the books using the Dewey Decimal System and created book cards and date slips and added pockets for all the books. The families that resided in the area had no access to TVs and the radio signals were unreliable. The community had a great response to the work done by the committee. The library began by charging 5 and 10 pesos (equivalent to 1 cent and 2 cents) for daily rental. The funds began to accumulate and soon enough the committee was able to purchase new titles. The library was run by volunteers acting as librarians and was open one hour a night, three nights a week. The location soon had to be changed because of housing shortages. The Andes Copper Company recognized that the library was imperative to the community and decided to build a permanent building for the library in the school, which was used by the children of the workers. The new building received new shelves, desks and fluorescent lighting was installed. The directors of the company even began a fund for new books. The library was expanded and new U.S. titles continued to be purchased.

Climate

References

{{coord, 26.4342, S, 69.4833, W, source:wikidata, display=title Geography of Atacama Region Former populated places in Chile