A border dispute over these resources between Bolivia and Chile led to the War of the Pacific. Saltpeter was mined on a large scale until the early 1940s. Today there are about 170 abandoned nitrate mining towns in the desert, almost all of which were closed after the invention of synthetic nitrate in Germany in the first decade of the 20th century.
In addition, the desert has rich deposits of copper, gold, silver and iron, as well as boron, lithium, sodium nitrate and potassium salts. Bishofite (a hydrous magnesium chloride mineral) is mined in the Salar de Atacama.
