Place:San Juan, San Juan, Argentina


NameSan Juan
Alt namesSan Juan de la Fronterasource: Encyclopædia Britannica (1988) X, 391
Coordinates31.55°S 68.517°W
Located inSan Juan, Argentina     (1562 - )
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

San Juan is the capital city of the Argentine province of San Juan in the Cuyo region, located in the Tulúm Valley, west of the San Juan River, at above mean sea level, with a population of around 112,000 as per the (over 500,000 in the metropolitan area).

It is a modern city with wide streets and well drawn avenues with wide sidewalks and vegetation of different species of trees irrigated by canals, from which it derives its nickname oasis town.



the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores, the Huarpe Indians inhabited this area.

San Juan de la Frontera was founded on June 13, 1562 by Juan Jufré at the shore of the San Juan River. In 1593 flooding damaged the town, for which reason its setting was moved south to its current location.

San Juan was a sleepy, provincial town during colonial times (1562–1810) and took practically no part in the internal wars that devastated Argentina in its so-called Organizational Period (1820-1860.) Two of the most prominent members of the 1816 Congress of Tucumán which declared Argentina's independence from Spain, however, came from San Juán: Francisco Narciso de Laprida, who was president of the congress, and San Juan's bishop Friar Justo Santa María de Oro, a Dominican friar and an eloquent speaker whose persuasive oratory was largely responsible for Argentina becoming a republic and not a monarchy like Brazil.

Probably the most important and famous city son was Fray Justo's nephew, and president of Argentina between 1868 and 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, whose birthplace was turned into a National Historical Monument in 1910, during the administration of president Roque Sáenz Peña.

On January 15, 1944, a powerful earthquake devastated the city, killing around 10,000 people and leaving half of the provincial population homeless. Another quake, 7.4 in the Richter magnitude scale, struck 80 km northeast of the city on November 23, 1977, causing considerable damage and killing 65 people around the province.

After the disaster of 1944, the city was reconstructed on concentric boulevards, with straight, well-lit, tree-lined avenues and modern housing. It has mostly lost its colonial aspect, but retains an open, sunny Mediterranean look.

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