The Otranto Bauxite deposit was discovered in the 1940s, thanks to the accidental discovery of a large mineral by a student of Prof. Liborio Salomi (1882-1952), professor of Natural History at the Technical Institute “O.G. Costa “of Lecce, and was made official a few years later by Eng. Camillo Crema of the Geological Survey of Italy. Throughout the 1960s and up to 1976, the year in which the business was closed, the Otranto bauxite fingers were extracted, washed, shipped to the nearby port and shipped to Marghera.
Bauxite was and still is the raw material from which aluminum is extracted and also finds other increasingly widespread uses in the preparation of abrasives, refractories and colors.
This picturesque two-tone union between the emerald green of the water and the rusty red of the badlands dug by the meteoric rains, represents not only the reference point for numerous animal species but is also an example of a natural remedy for human intervention.