Melincué, Santa Fe Province, Argentina

🇦🇷 Melincué is a town (comuna) in the south of the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, 287 km from the provincial capital. It is the head town of the General López Department. It was founded in 1872 and recognised officially as a town on 3 September 1986.

Melincué is located immediately north of an endorheic lake (Laguna Melincué) and an associated wetland area that is included in a nature reserve. The fluctuating level of the Melincué Lake and the lack of hydrical infrastructure have often caused the town to suffer floods.

History The oldest true references of occupation of the place, date from the official documents of the time of Spanish colonization, around 1633. The same documents that grant concessions to the new Spanish occupants, refer to the existence of aboriginal population previously conquered and subjected, in what officials call a "war against the barbarian Indians". Then, at the time of the Viceroyalty, the place was a strategic point in the passage of the royal roads that linked Buenos Aires with the Litoral, Córdoba, Tucumán, Alto Perú, Cuyo and Chile. The presence of hostile aborigines motivated the viceregal authorities to protect these roads with armed garrisons. It was thus that Viceroy Pedro de Cevallos decided to install several military garrisons, founding a fort in the Melincué place, commissioning Commander Juan González to that end, between October and November 1777.

In 1779, Viceroy Juan José de Vértiz reinforced the cordon of fortifications between Chascomús Fort and Melincué Fort. The forts were occupied by the bodies called "Blandengues", and the forts by the militias. At the end of the century, according to the censuses ordered by Vertigi, Melincué had 400 inhabitants.

In 1796, Viceroy Melo ordered a geographical survey of the border between Buenos Aires and Melincué. Félix de Azara, head of the commission, stated that this place belonged to the jurisdiction of Santa Fe, and mentions the origin of the name, as a reminder of a cacique of the Pampa community.

In 1872, the area was subject to colonization, and the installation of a railway line was sought. To that end, the Tierra de Compañía de del Gran Sud de Santa Fe y Córdoba founded the town and station of San Urbano, a name that lasted for the station. The Commune was created on September 3, 1886, and the layout of the town was approved in 1889, renamed Melincué. The colonization and development of the railways, were contemporary of a great immigration of European farmers. Melincué preserved a situation of crossing the communication routes, then railways, linking, by several branches, with Villa Constitución, Río Cuarto, Pergamino and Rosario, among other localities.

Urban facilities

The city has: • Provincial Courts. Public Prosecutor's Office. • API delegation. • Banco Nación and Nuevo Banco Provincial de Santa Fe. • Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. • Two primary schools and one middle school. • Regional and Cultural Historical Museum. • "Bernardino Rivadavia" popular library. • Regional police unit. Regional Unit VIII • An Asitencial Center, SAMC0 Melincue. • Two Club, Melincue nautical club.

Geography The Melincué lagoon is housed in a small area of tectonic depression, occupying the deepest part of a sunken block of approximately rectangular shape of about 30 km by 15 km. As the bottom of the lagoon is below the water table, it receives groundwater, in addition to the surface rain spills from its basin. This circumstance causes the progressive filling of the bottom with the drag sediments, and the increase of the lacunar surface.

The average level of the city is 87 m s. n. m., being lower than the heights of all the localities that surround it, such as Firmat (103 m), Hughes (95 m), Wheelwright (92 m), Elortondo (103 m), Carreras (95 m), Labordeboy (103 m), Santa Emilia (105 m) etc.

Laguna Melincué Laguna Melincué was until the cyclical historical shift, since the 1970s of the isohietas, the undisputed tourist star of the region. Located on the shores of the homonymous lagoon, the town grew dynamic and thriving to the beat of the thousands of people who arrived to fight the onslaughts of the Pampas summer in its salty waters.

In the early 1930s, with the maximum cyclic downspout, a company built a majestic hotel on one of the six natural islands of the lagoon (covered since 1980 by 2 m of water) and communicated it with the coast through a breakwater. The work was the most important in a series of constructions that made up the spa, the only tourist complex in the area. Melincué's fame and its lagoon quickly grew; they were years of prosperity and prosperity, in which tourists from all over the country arrived. It was, coincidentally, in 1933 - the year of the inauguration of the luxurious hotel - when the lagoon gave its first warning. The increase that year in the rainfall regime caused the overflow, and the water entered the town.

After the El Niño signal, the Dry Hemicycle (1920-1970) again caused the drop in the water level. No one from the national and provincial governments of those years was interested in such a phenomenon, despite the antecedents of the Wet Cycle (1870 - 1920), when Florentino Ameghino had warned of the need to establish an extensive system of prevention and regulation (including storage) of water resources. But Ameghino was ignored, and much less attended were the millennial records (maintained by oral tradition) of the original peoples, on the hemicyclic alternations flood/drought. Nobody assumed at that time that over the years, the successive floods of the lagoon would end the idyll of the vacationers and Melincué. In the early 1950s, the creation of a National Park was decreed that covered the Melincué area (still relatively little anthropically modified), but in 1955 the project to create such a National Park was absolutely repealed.

In the 1970s the slow ascent began, the lagoon gains with each "wet year" arable land, the hotel becomes unused and becomes a symbol of disaster. The efforts to prevent the lagoon from spreading like a monster are in vain. The people of the region, the same ones who had boasted of having such wonder, then begin to weave countless mysteries. "The lagoon grows because it is an eye of the sea", some say. Others that the reason for such "caprinous" behavior responds to the underground course of the Quinto River and the Salado River (Buenos Aires), which feed it. There are even those who rest their ear on the ground, hear the murmur of the current.

Pumping station If the lagoon basin, 150,000 hectares, received a significant rain before closing the protection cordon, Melincué would be flooded. And by 2020, the population would be completely watered. It should be remembered that between 1899 and 1901 (three years; previous Wet cycle) it rained more than 4,000 mm. The old "San Urbano Channel" must be refurbished and made operable, widen the road bridge and the railroad bridge on Provincial Route 93.

The pumping system guarantees the water level at the 82.50 m level. With two aduction drains and pumping stations, the water bypasses the 8 meters of elevation and discharge in the San Urbano channel. Currently, the 2ª pumping plant has been completed. The electricity supply project is finished, and with the leveling, the water would be 1 meter below the hotel, recovering the island and 13,000 private hectares.

Melincué Casino & Resort[edit] On September 28, 2007, the first legally authorized casino in the history of the province of Santa Fe was officially inaugurated. The venture is co-owned by the Argentine company Boldt and the Catalan company Inverama.