History
Cut off from the mainland, Isla Grande developed its own indigenous cultures. The first bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers crossed a temporary land bridge that formed during glacial fluctuations of the Pleistocene era, some 11,800 years ago. These were probably the direct antecedents of the Mannekenk and Selk'nam (or Ona ) tribes that survived until the twentieth century. Later, indigenous groups living a predominantly maritime existence colonized the southern Fuegian channels: the forefathers of the Kaweskar (Alacaluf) who inhabited territory that is now Chilean; and the Yamana (Yahgans), the canoe people of the Beagle Channel. Archeological finds near Ushuaia attest to their presence from at least 4000 BC. No one is certain about the provenance of these people: new theories postulate seaborne migrations from the Pacific west; but current consensus still favours the idea that they evolved from the same ethnic base as the terrestrial groups, in spite of considerable ethnographic and linguistic differences. Early contacts between indigenous groups and European explorers were sporadic from the sixteenth century onwards, even with the advent of commercial whaling and sealing in the eighteenth century. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, this changed dramatically, with tragic results for the indigenous population. When FitzRoy came here in the Beagle in the 1830s, an estimated three to four thousand Selk'nam and Mannekenk were living in Isla Grande, with some three thousand each of Yamana and Kaweskar living in the entire southern archipelago. A hundred years later, these cultures had been effectively annihilated, with the years 1870 to 1920 proving the watershed. By the 1930s, the Mannekenk were virtually extinct, and the other groups numbered no more than fifty individuals apiece. Whereas the sophisticated subsistence cultures of indigenous groups developed through a principle of adaptation in the face of a hostile environment, the white settlers who followed came with the intent to dominate that environment, driven by motives of profit or progress. White settlement came in three phases. Anglican missionaries began to catechize the Yamana in the south, and Thomas Bridges established the first permanent mission on Ushuaia Bay in 1871. From the late 1880s, the Italian Roman Catholic Salesian Order began a similar process to the north of the Fuegian Andes, consolidated with the foundation of their first mission near the Rio Grande river in 1893. Alluvial gold was discovered on the island in 1879, and soon thereafter the Rumanian-born adventurer, Julius Popper, established a fiefdom based around Bahia San Sebastian, which he ruled as a despot between 1887 and 1893, issuing his own gold coinage and periodically gunning down the indigenous inhabitants with the help of his bands of men. From the mid-1890s came a new colonizing impetus: the inauspicious-looking northern plains proved to be ideal sheep-farming territory, and vast latifundias sprang up, owned by people such as Jose Menendez. Croat, Scottish, Basque, Italian, Galician and Chilean immigrants arrived to work on the estancias and build up their own landholdings. Today, the sheep-farming industry is in crisis, with the price of wool at an all-time low, and the island's economy is more dependent on the production of petroleum and natural gas, fisheries, forestry and technological industries such as television assembly plants, which were attracted to the area by its status as a duty-free zone. Luxury items are comparatively cheap, but basic items such as food are much more expensive than in other parts of the country due to the huge distances involved in importing them. Hopes run high for the fast-expanding tourist industry centred on Ushuaia, and you'll find many people there who've relocated from Buenos Aires in search of a more relaxed style of life. In 1991, the region gained full provincial status and is now known as the Provincia de Tierra del Fuego, Antartida e Islas del Atlantico Sur . Its jurisdiction is seen to extend over all territories of the south, including the Falklands Islands or Islas Malvinas, which lie 550km off the coast, and Argentinian Antarctica.
Tierra del FuegoMaria says "A place along the coastline, mountains surround it and it is lovely."
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