File:20170808 Bolivia 1488 Pulacayo sRGB (37926425576).jpg

An old train that was robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Butch Cassidy (Robert Leroy Parker, 1866-1908) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, 1867-1908) were notorious train and bank robbers in the American Old West. Hounded by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, they left the United States in early 1901, first to Argentina (with some hiding out in Chile) and then Bolivia where they are believed to have been killed in a shootout near San Vicente not that far south of here.

Pulacayo was an important silver-mining center in the latter part of the 19th century. Although Spaniards had mined in the area until the late 1700s, it wasn’t until 1833 that the nearby Huanchaca mine was established. It became the second-largest silver mine in the world and was a key driver of the Bolivian economy. Here is where the modern machinery of the Industrial Revolution first came to Bolivia. In the early 1890s the first railroad to reach Bolivia connected Pulacayo to the port of Antofagasta, Chile. The town’s mining facilities were abandoned in 1952. Today Pulacayo is an industrial heritage site. Among other historical remnants, a number of old locomotives and coaches are displayed here.

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