Potosi Silver Discovered

April 21, 1545

A native prospector named Diego Gualpa stumbled on a vein of pure silver on the slopes of Cerro Rico in the Bolivian Andes. The Spanish laid out a boomtown at fourteen thousand feet. Potosi would swallow thousands of indigenous laborers and pump half the world's silver toward Ming China. The mountain's output inflated prices across Eurasia, fueled Spanish wars, and connected four continents through the flow of Andean silver.