EARLY HISTORY OF CHUQUICAMATA

Considerably later, principally from l879-l912, small English and Chilean companies mined the surface oxide ores. Then, engineers of the Guggenheims, a large world-wide mining company, visited Chuqui., noted the extensive oxide mineralization , and calculated that a large tonnage operation with a new oxide treatment plant would be very profitable. They acquired all the small mines and began a drilling program which developed an important tonnage of oxide ore. Shovels and trucks were purchased and large-scale mining began in l915.

Somewhat later The Anaconda Co., interested in acquiring important new copper resources, sent Reno Sales, Chief Geologist to Chile to investigate the copper deposits. At Chuqui Sales sketched a very large, strongly altered zone to the west of the Guggenheim oxide operations and concluded that at depth there would be a very significant deposit of sulfide copper ore. He urged Anaconda to purchase the Chuqui. property from the Guggenheims.

The timing could not have been better. Guggenheim executives had noted the important Chilean nitrate deposits being developed on a pampa west of Chuqui and concluded 'they' could make a lot more mining nitrate than mining copper. They sold Chuqui to Anaconda for +ACQ-100,000,000. In the fifties Clyde Weed, then Vice President of Mining operations for Anaconda, showed me a formed check mounted on a wall in his office in New York, and said to me, +ACI-Ya know Glenn, the Guggenheims made the biggest mistake in its corporate life when it sold Chuqui to us--and they didn't make many+ACI-

Chuqui. was operated under the name of Chile Exploration Co. a subsidiary of Anaconda, from l923 until the entire operation (and the Potrerillos and El Salvador mines and other under- developed copper 'mines') was expropriated by the Chilean Government in the sixties.