Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works

Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works are two places in Chile where people used to dig up a special mineral called saltpeter. Saltpeter is a very important ingredient for things like fertilizer and gunpowder.

Back in the olden days, there weren't machines that could dig up the saltpeter, so people had to do it themselves. They would dig up the saltpeter from the ground, and then put it into big containers called "piles". Water would then be poured over the saltpeter in the piles. This made a liquid that was then collected and put into pans. The pans were heated up really hot, which turned the liquid into crystals.

These crystals were then sold to people who needed them for all sorts of things. The process of digging up the saltpeter and turning it into crystals was hard work, so people started to build towns near where the saltpeter mines were. Humberstone and Santa Laura are two of these towns. They had houses for the people who worked in the mines, stores where people could buy things they needed, and even schools for the children.

People worked really hard in the saltpeter works, but eventually lots of other places in the world started to find their own saltpeter, so the demand for saltpeter from Chile went down. The mines started to close, and eventually the towns of Humberstone and Santa Laura were no longer needed. Today, you can still visit these towns and see what life used to be like for the people who worked in the saltpeter mines.