pean and North American (the latter were mostly traders, port and railway engineers, and industrial), all of whom were attracted to the port activities, mining, railway and commercial, which gave rise to exploitation of nitrate.
Propaganda poster of Chilean nitrate.
The port received as nitrate vessels dispatched to places as far away as Hamburg, Antwerp or Yokohama. Moreover, the railway station was the terminus of the so-called "nitrate railways", built by British capital years ago as a result of private initiatives, which always faced water shortages. By 1895, the railroad joined with Iquique and Pisagua , as of November 23, 1913, with James, via the railway station of Pintados, where it joined the southern section of the "railroad salitrero" of Iquique (which linked to the northern section stretching to Pisagua) with the line longitudinal north.
It should be noted that by 1897, the Railway Salitrero Pisagua was valued at more than $ 5,349,000 of the time, being the more expensive real estate in the area, even exceeding the nitrate richest Department, as Josefina , Agua Santa and Aguada , valued between 2.1 and 2.3 million dollars at the time.
This boom determined that the Chilean government in 1884, created the Department of Pisagua , with a governor and a Municipality which survived until 1979, when it was annexed to the municipality of Huara .
Customs was also based in the city, and it depended on the port of Caleta Jun�n. Ecclesiastically, directly dependent on the Holy See, through the Vicariate of Iquique, and had a church called San Pedro de Pisagua . 19 It formed also part of the 2nd Marine Interior, who had a seat on the Port of Iquique. 20 The Chilean Civil Registry in the Department had three constituencies: Pisagua, walks and Negreiros.
The Department had the limits Pisagua Quebrada de Camarones north, separating it from the then province of Tacna (Department of Arica), the Republic of Bolivia to the
