San José Mine
copper-gold mine located near Copiapó, Atacama Region, Chile
The San José Mine (Spanish: Mina San José) was a small copper-gold mine located near Copiapó, Atacama Region, Chile. The mine became known internationally for its collapse in 2010, which trapped 33 miners 700 metres (2,300 ft) underground. Its workings are reached by a long sloping roadway with many spiral turns (a diagram shows ten turns), not by a vertical mineshaft.
It was converted into a tourist attraction.
History
The San José Mine is located 45 kilometers northwest of Copiapó. The mine began operations in 1889. In 1957, Jorge Kemeny Letay, a Hungarian immigrant and a nephew of mining businessman Emérico Letay founded the San Esteban Mining Company (Spanish: Compañía Minera San Esteban). Jorge died in 2000 and the administration of the mine was overtaken by his two sons Marcelo and Emérico Kemeny Füller. The latter died in 2004 and Marcelo then associated with his father-in-law Alejandro Bohn Berenguer who became gerente geneal (CEO). Despite the income of the mine not being enough to invest in security measures needed to mine at great depths Bohn is reported to have pushed for continued mining.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q963820. VIAF identifies the subject as 193651484. Authority coordinates are -27.160, -70.497. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 1889, 1957 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “San José Mine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.