Luis Jorge Fontana

Luis Jorge Fontana

Luis Jorge Fontana (born April 19, 1846 in Buenos Aires , † October 18, 1920 in San Juan ) was an Argentine military, politician, naturalist, writer and founder of the city of Formosa , the capital of the province of Formosa .

Luis Jorge Fontana was the son of Luis María Fontana , an official in the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas , and Doña Irene Burgeois . As a child he moved with his family to Carmen de Patagones . He began his military career at the age of 13 as a soldier in the Comandancia Militar in Río Negro . He took part in the Paraguay War and after the end of the war lived for some time in Buenos Aires, where he became a student of Germán Burmeister . With him he studied natural sciences , astronomy and physics .

On June 3, 1875, he was appointed Secretary to the Gobernador of the Chaco Province , Don Napoleón Uriburu . After his return to the military, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the government made him head of the IV Comisión Demarcadora de Límites con Chile (4th Commission for Determining the Borders with Chile). At the official suggestion he founded the city of Formosa on April 8, 1879.

On the occasion of his return to Patagonia, which he had visited as a child, he was appointed gobernador of the newly founded province of Chubut in 1885. There he led an expedition to the west with an expedition group called the Rifleros del Chubut , and discovered the Valle 16 de octubre , a fertile valley of the Precordillas, in which a colony of Welsh settled.

Luis Jorge Fontana spent the last years of his life in the province of San Juan , where he held various public and municipal offices.

Fonts

• "Gran Chaco", Geographical Description; Fauna and Flora of Northwest Argentina
• 1883 - "Viaje de exploración al río Pilcomayo"
• 1886 - "Estudio sobre el caballo fósil" with a foreword by Bartolomé Miter.
• 1908 - "Los cuadrúpedos y las aves de la región andina"
• 1912 - "Ad Ovo", essay on prehistoric subjects