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Events/Company founded · 1885

Broken Hill Proprietary Company formed

Company founded, 1885, Australia.

What happened

The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP) was formed in 1885 to work the Broken Hill orebody, according to the Broken Hill council history.1,2

Why it matters

BHP grew from this mine into one of the largest mining companies in the world.1,2

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. Comstock Lode strikes

    The Comstock set the pattern for the Western mining boom town. By the mid-1870s the lode was seen as played out.3,4,5

  2. San Francisco ships US$724 million of treasure in 16 years

    Eastern ports took US$462 million, England US$168 million and China US$68 million.6,7

  3. General Mining Law of 1872

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

  4. Schieffelin finds silver at Tombstone

    The NPS file says Tombstone became the largest town in Arizona Territory.10,11

  5. Charles Rasp finds the Broken Hill orebody

    The orebody supported the world's largest silver-lead-zinc mining district and led to BHP.1,2

  6. Antofagasta railway reaches Oruro

    The line to the Pacific cut costs of sending Bolivian ore to Europe.12,13,14

  7. South Broken Hill silver mine airblast

    The regulator uses it as a case study of ground failure at Broken Hill.2,15

  8. Broken Hill Central Mine falls of earth

    The regulator ties the deaths to creep caused by shrinkage of mullock fill.2,16

Open the full timeline

Where next

People

Led byEssington LewisThe man who steered BHP from Broken Hill to steel.17

Mines

OwnedMount NewmanBHP now runs Mt Newman, where production began at Mt Whaleback in 1969.18OwnedOlympic DamBHP's Olympic Dam made 321 kt of payable copper in the year to June 2026.18Located inBroken HillSee the mine behind this story: Broken Hill.1

Places

Located inBroken HillSee the place where this happened: Broken Hill.1

Sources

  1. History of Broken Hill Broken Hill City Council
  2. Broken Hill (item Q270734), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  3. Virginia City Historic District, Nevada US National Park Service
  4. The Comstock Lode (blog, 10 June 2021) US Bureau of Land Management
  5. Comstock Lode (item Q1122817), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  6. Peabody A., Early voyages to California (treasure shipped from San Francisco 1854-1869) Library of Congress (Essex Institute Historical Collections)
  7. Wikidata item Q62 (San Francisco)
  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. Tombstone Historic District, National Historic Landmark nomination US National Park Service
  11. Tombstone (item Q79873), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  12. Correa Vera L., Del poder a los tratados: desarrollo y ferrocarriles en Bolivia, 1870-1904 Historia 46(2) (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, via Redalyc)
  13. Hillman J., The Emergence of the Tin Industry in Bolivia Journal of Latin American Studies 16(2) (Cambridge University Press)
  14. Wikidata item Q35246 (Oruro)
  15. 1895 South Broken Hill Silver Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  16. 1902 Broken Hill Central Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  17. Essington Lewis History Trust of South Australia (SA History Hub)
  18. Form 20-F for the year ended 30 June 2026 BHP Group (SEC)

Pictures on this page: Essington Lewis 1945.jpg, not recorded on the file page (Public domain).

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: Froth flotation and tailings by Nina111955, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0).