Five places where the ground beneath the town — or the enormous hole next to it — was the whole reason anyone came, and where the wires of the industrial world were dug out of the earth.
The Berkeley Pit closed in 1982 and its toxic lake is part of the Upper Clark Fork Superfund complex, the largest in the US. The Anaconda Company dominated the district; 9.6 million tonnes of copper were mined here 1880–2005.
William Cornell Greene's Cananea Consolidated Copper Company was struck in June 1906; Arizona Rangers intervened and 23 died. Grupo México's Buenavista del Cobre remains Mexico's largest copper mine.
The Falun Mine collapsed in 1687 and closed in 1992; UNESCO listed the mining area in 2001. Stora Kopparberg, chartered 1347, is among the oldest companies in existence. Falu red paint is a by-product of the ore.
Founded in 1936 to serve the Nkana mine, Kitwe is Zambia's second city; Nkana's shafts reach 1,300 m. Frederick Chiluba, a Copperbelt trade unionist, became president in 1991.
Chuquicamata, 16 km north, is the largest open-pit copper mine by excavated volume; its company town was closed in 2004–07 and residents moved to Calama. The Battle of Calama (1879) opened the War of the Pacific; Che Guevara visited in 1952.
Think you'd have found them? Play today's expedition, or replay this one from the archive.