The Chuquicamata mining complex is located 1,650 Km north of Santiago, at 2,870 meters above sea level. It has two open pit mines, Chuquicamata and Mina Sur.
Chuquicamata started operations in 1910-1915, though its deposits were known for centuries to the local native peoples. An interesting note to historians: the shovels used to excavate the Panama Canal were disassembled, shipped to Chuqui, reassembled and used for years.
Labeled the largest open pit copper mine in the world, the mine at Chuqui is elliptical in form, with a surface of almost 8,000,000 m2, and 900 m deep. The sides of the mines are excavated in levels, called benches, where expertly and precisely placed detonations loosen the ore, which is loaded onto huge dump trucks and moved out of the mine pit for processing.
In the future, mine retrieval will go underground, as the pit gets deeper and wider and operations more expensive.
