Isla de Los Estados - History

History

The first Europeans in the area were Jacob le Maire and Willem Schouten on December 25, 1615, who named it Country of the Lords of the State. Le Maire and Schouten passed their ship, Eendracht, through a route south of the Straits of Magellan, a route now called the Le Maire Strait. To his left Le Maire noted the land mass (unexplored) as Staten Landt was perhaps a portion of the great 'Southern Continent.' The first European name for New Zealand was Staten Landt, the name given to it by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who in 1642 became the first European to see the islands. Tasman assumed it was part of this 'Southern Continent.'

Dutch captain Hendrik Brouwer sighted it in 1643. Argentine pilot Luis Piedra Buena constructed a shelter near Port Cook in 1862, and built a small seal oil extraction facility on the island.

The Light house of San Juan del Salvamento was inaugurated on May 25 1884, by Comodoro Augusto Lasserre, and functioned until September 1900. The lighthouse, better known as Faro del fin del mundo ("Lighthouse at the end of the world"), is said to have inspired Jules Verne's book The Lighthouse at the End of the World, published in 1905. A military prison was set on the island, working from 1899 to 1902, when it had to be moved to Tierra del Fuego after being compromised by the strong winds.