Chuquicamata

The biggest hole ever dug for copper

The largest open pit copper mine in the world measured by the volume dug out of it, just outside Calama in northern Chile at 2,850 metres. The pit is 850 metres deep, second only to Bingham Canyon. Flotation and smelting plants went in from 1952, refining expanded in 1968, and by the late 1970s it was turning out half a million tonnes of copper a year. It was Anaconda Copper ground until the nationalisation of Chilean copper around 1971, and has been run by the state company Codelco since. For most of the 20th century it was the most productive copper mine in Chile, passed by Escondida in 1996 and by others since, and in 2019 it began the change from open pit to underground block caving that is meant to keep it working for decades more.