
Artificial Mountains - Thevet
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/artificial-mountains-slag-heaps-concrete
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kijin
When you enter Seoul from the airport by bus, you see a couple of flat-topped
hills across the river next to the World Cup soccer stadium. They're about 100
meters tall and just over 2 kilometers from end to end. You wouldn't find
anything unusual about them if you weren't used to the Korean landscape --
there are no naturally flat-topped hills around here -- but that's the old
garbage dump for this city with a population of 10 million.

They surrounded the garbage with concrete walls to prevent wastewater from
leaking into the river, poured a thick layer of soil on top of it, planted
trees, and built walkways. Now it's a public park. The underlying garbage
still emits methane, which is collected and burned to power the adjacent
soccer stadium and other facilities.

We humans made these mountains of crap ourselves. We might not have the budget
and/or political will to remove them, but we do have the capacity to make them
look significantly less crappy, and perhaps even useful, if we want to.

~~~
lb1lf
-In Norway, they one-upped that - the (now defunct) Røros copper mines operated for more than 300 years, and the spoil dumps from the processing are quite the sight [0]

Rather than tidying them up, though, they were put on the UNESCO world
heritage list. (Along with the rest of the municipality of Røros; the mining
museum is well worth a visit if you have an interest in industrial history and
happen to find yourself in central Norway for some reason or the other.)

[0]
[https://lokalhistoriewiki.no/images/Slagghaugene_p%C3%A5_R%C...](https://lokalhistoriewiki.no/images/Slagghaugene_p%C3%A5_R%C3%B8ros_05.JPG)

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jamesrcole
Though it's hill-sized not mountain-sized, there is Silbury Hill in England

"The largest artificial mound in Europe, mysterious Silbury Hill compares in
height and volume to the roughly contemporary Egyptian pyramids. Probably
completed in around 2400 BC, it apparently contains no burial. Though clearly
important in itself, its purpose and significance remain unknown."

[https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silbury-
hil...](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silbury-hill/)

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close04
> Outsider artist Leonard Knight built Salvation Mountain in Niland,
> California out of concrete, sand, and accumulated junk. He used so much
> salvaged paint to cover it with brightly colored religious messages that the
> county declared the site a “toxic nightmare” due to the amount of lead in
> the soil and considered dismantling the mountain and hauling it to a toxic
> waste dump.

How does someone get to build such a mountain without anyone taking notice and
considering the impact? You need a permit to extend your porch but nobody
looks more carefully at someone building such an artificial mountain? I
understand that when powerful economic and political interests are concerned
some of these worries will be artificially dismissed but this doesn't appear
to be one of those cases.

~~~
ovi256
Niland is an unincorporated area, so there's no city, and he probably never
asked the county for a permit. Without a complaint, the county department
won't investigate, they have too much to do. And what asshole goes to make a
complaint for artwork.

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SJSque
It's nice to see that they (briefly) mention the half-jokingly proposed
artificial mountain in the infamously flat Netherlands [1] towards the end of
the article.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Berg_Komt_Er](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Berg_Komt_Er)

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Tenoke
On a smaller scale, the highest hill in Berlin is man-made[0](out of leftover
rubble) and was recently superseded by another hill which grew because waste
was added to it.[1]

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsberg)

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkenberge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkenberge)

~~~
Nux
Reminds me of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio)

"is an artificial mound in Rome composed almost entirely of testae, fragments
of broken ancient Roman pottery, nearly all discarded amphorae dating from the
time of the Roman Empire"

"It has a circumference of nearly a kilometre (0.6 mi) and stands 35 metres
(115 ft) high, though it was probably considerably higher in ancient times."

~~~
raducu
Thank you, that was a great read.

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davchana
If you exit Indian Capital New Delhi by Road towards Haryana, somewhere at
border you will see two hills with lots of trucks, bulldozers, people working
on them on the other side of river. Those hills are entirely made of Garbage
from the city. And yes, it stinks in Summer and/or Rains.

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cody_ellingham
Recently I was reading about the Aberfan Disaster in Wales. A huge coal spoil
heap slipped and destroyed a school in 1966.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster)

