Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The San Matías Gulf describes an immense arc oriented towards the East, and includes the entire Atlantic coast of the Province of Río Negro and part of the north coast of the Province of Chubut. About 25 miles south of the seaside resort of Las Grutas, maps reveal the presence of a tiny spot called El Fuerte or Argentine Fort. It can be accessed by a path that runs along the beach, coming southbound from San Antonio Oeste, in Río Negro, or from Puerto Madryn, in Chubut about 200 kilometers to the south.

The first mention of the site comes from a French cartographer named Victor de Moussy, hired by the Argentine authorities, who in 1859 drew a map of the San Matías Gulf area, in which he located an ``Ancien Fort Abandoneé '' (Abandoned Old Fort) that did not appear in the previous Spanish maps of the conquest due, according to supporters of neo-templarian theories, by the desire of the Church to keep the site hidden.