A year ago today, 33 miners were rescued from the San José copper and gold mine near Copiapó, Chile, after being trapped underground for 69 days.

Avery Classics owns a rare and important document of the history of mining in Chile, a large presentation album of photographs of the establishment of Playa Blanca in Antofagasta. This company town was designed and built for the Huanchaca Company of Bolivia by Arthur F. Wendt, an engineer and contractor from New York. The photograph album includes views of the major industrial structures, as well as the houses and clubs built for the workmen.

To consult the album, readers should follow the procedures outlined on the Avery Classics website.

For the history of Playa Blanca, readers can also consult Huanchaca: el establecimiento industrial de Playa Blanca en Antofagasta by María Teresa Ahumada Manchot (Antofagasta, Chile: Ediciones Santos Ossa, 1999), available from Avery offsite.

–by Carolyn Yerkes, Curator of Avery Classics