La Oroya

La Oroya is a city on the Mantaro River in the Junín Region of central Peru and the capital of Yauli Province, on the eastern watershed of the Andes at 3,745 metres and about 176 kilometres east-north-east of Lima. It is the eastern end of the Central Highway of Peru. The Spanish set up a small mining settlement here in 1533, it took the name San Jerónimo de Callapampa in 1861 and La Oroya in 1893, became the provincial capital in 1925 and was raised to city status in 1942. The Ferrocarril Central Andino railway reached it in 1893 and helped mining grow. Its main employer is a smelter complex begun in 1922 by the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, nationalised in 1974 and bought by Doe Run Peru in 1997, which produces copper, lead, zinc and several by-product metals. The pollution from it led the Blacksmith Institute to list La Oroya among the world's worst polluted places in 2007.