Sewell Mining Town
Located 2,000 meters above sea level in the Andes Mountains, 60 kilometers east of Rancagua, in an extreme environment, the mining town of Sevier was built in 1905 by the Braden Copper Company to house workers for what would become the world's largest underground copper mine, El Teniente. It is an outstanding example of company towns that emerged in many remote parts of the world by fusing local labor with the resources of industrialized countries to mine and process high-value natural resources. The town was built on terrain too steep for wheeled vehicles and is organized around a large central staircase that rises from the train station. Irregularly shaped formal plazas along the way, complete with ornamental trees and plants, form the town's main public space or plaza. The buildings that line the streets are of wood, often painted in bright green, yellow, red and blue. In its heyday, Sevier had 15,000 residents, but was mostly abandoned in the 1970s.