Chacabuco, Former saltpeter town in Sierra Gorda, Chile.

Chacabuco is an abandoned mining town in the Atacama Desert that was built to support saltpeter extraction. The site still shows administrative buildings, worker homes, factories, and storage facilities scattered across the expansive grounds.

The town was established in 1924 by the Lautaro Nitrate Company to expand saltpeter production. As synthetic nitrate production grew in the 1930s, natural saltpeter mining lost economic value and the settlement was abandoned.

The name Chacabuco comes from Mapudungun: chacay, a thorny-trunked tree, and bucu, a spring. The office was built for the Shanks production system, the last nitrate works to use it, and housed a population that reached 5,000, with a productive core and a separate urban quarter.

Chacabuco lies 105 km northeast of Antofagasta and 33 km northeast of Baquedano, reached by road through open desert. About 98 landmines left by the Chilean military remain around the site, so stay on marked paths and do not wander into the surrounding terrain. A former prisoner, Roberto Saldívar, guarded the site from 1991 until 2006; Pedro Barreda now serves as caretaker.

Around 98 landmines left by the Chilean military still surround the site, a legacy of its use as a prison camp. A former political prisoner, Roberto Saldívar, returned in 1991 to live alone among the ruins and guard them from looting until 2006.