Villa Mercedes, Argentina

Nov. 27, 2024

Villa Mercedes, Argentina, population around 130,000, was founded in 1856, so it's not an old colonial town with a lot of interesting architecture.

It was in 1706 that a military fort was built on the banks of the Rio Quinto, along with a post house. Slowly more was built around it and in 1752 it was recognized as a town. Cardinal Giovanni María Mastai Ferretti - later named Pope Pius IX, was from here, and Charles Darwin also visited the town. The town had seen many attacks from the indigenous people and was abandoned and repopulated several times. The town was named "Rio Quinto" because it sat alongside the Rio Quinto river, but in 1861 it was renamed Villa Mercedes. The locals refer to it simply as Mercedes.

The railroad arrived in the 1890s and the grew and saw an influx of immigrants from Spain, Italy, Lebanon, Syria, and other countries. The town grew with a large increase in agriculture and ranching. Many new industries came to the town and it became a major producer.

The region in Argentina where this city is located is called "El Espinal" because it is where the humid pampas and the dry pampas meet. These two pampas form pretty much all of the center and middle of Argentina. The weather sees summer months (Nov. - Feb.) with highs of 27 - 29° C (82° F), and winters (Jun. - Sep.) see lows around 0° C (32° F). The humidity can get high at above 70% during the summer months.

The town does not have one main central plaza like pretty much all cities in South America, but it has many plazas spread out throughout the town. There is a big park that runs alongside Rio Cuarto (Cuarto River). In that park is a footbridge that crosses the river onto a peninsula, then you walk through that park space to a new bridge and an area where the government is doing river reclamation, or you can continue to the end of the peninsula and walk across a dam and circle back through yet more park space and over the two bridges.

Villa Mercedes is a pleasant town, I like this town even more than the two previous towns, also, the climate here feels less muggy, like there is a lower level of humidity here. Maybe that was just these few days I've been here, I don't know. But, it is a very nice town to visit even without anything particularly notable.