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Events/Company founded · 1873

Rio Tinto Company registered in London

Company founded, 1873-03-29, Spain.

What happened

Spain decided in 1869 to sell the Rio Tinto mines. A group led by Hugh Matheson made the best offer, and the Rio Tinto Company was registered in London on 29 March 1873 with Matheson as chairman.1,2

Why it matters

This is the origin of today's Rio Tinto.1,2

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. British imports of Chilean copper ore reach 19,829 t

    Imports had grown from 1,670 t in 1834; a duty and freight costs cut ore shipments sharply in 1845.3,4

  2. Caldera-Copiapo railway opens its first section

    Chile first railway, built with Atacama capital, ran 41 km from Caldera port to Monte Amargo.5,6

  3. Urmeneta finds the Tamaya copper deposit

    Tamaya lifted Chilean copper output sharply in the following decades.7

  4. Chile becomes the worlds top copper exporter

    Output peaked in the 1870s, and copper prices began to fall from 1874.7

  5. General Mining Law of 1872

    The law remains the basis for claims to locatable minerals on US federal land.8,9

  6. Rio Tinto Group founded

    Rio Tinto Group founded.10

  7. Mount Morgan gold mining begins

    The site is now a major abandoned mine remediation project.11,12

  8. Copper-bearing rock found during Canadian Pacific Railway works at Sudbury

    It started the Sudbury nickel-copper camp.13,14

Open the full timeline

Where next

Mines

Located inRiotinto mining districtSee the mine at the heart of this story: Riotinto mining district.1

Events

Led toRTZ and CRA form a dual listed groupThe 1873 company is the origin of today's Rio Tinto, which merged with CRA in 1995.1

Places

Located inMinas de RiotintoSee the place where this happened: Minas de Riotinto.1

Sources

  1. History of Rio Tinto
  2. Minas de Riotinto (item Q923830), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  3. Valenzuela L., The Chilean Copper Smelting Industry in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Phases of Expansion and Stagnation, 1834-58 Journal of Latin American Studies 24(3) (Cambridge University Press)
  4. Wikidata item Q3871 (Coquimbo)
  5. Ferrocarril Caldera-Copiapo Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile
  6. Wikidata item Q3708 (Caldera, Chile)
  7. Los ciclos mineros del cobre y la plata (1820-1880) Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile
  8. Mining Claims and Sites on Federal Lands (PDF) US Bureau of Land Management
  9. Washington, D.C. (item Q61), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  10. Wikidata item Q821293 (Rio Tinto Group founded)
  11. Mount Morgan remediation project Queensland Government
  12. Mount Morgan Mine (item Q6922260), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  13. Discovery Site of Sudbury Mining Camp (geotour sheet) Ontario Geological Survey / Ministry of Mines
  14. Greater Sudbury (item Q383434), coordinate location P625 Wikidata

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Chuquicamata from the ISS by Alexander Gerst (ESA), CC BY-SA 2.0. Pictures: Timna in de Negevwoestijn; rotspartij "de zuilen van Salomo", Poll, Willem van de / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Earth Observations taken by the Expedition 15 Crew, NASA JSC (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).