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 Carlos
Gesell settles in the dunes
In 1931 when Carlos Gesell was 40 years old, he began to
plant a lot of trees along the dunes that he had bought.
He purchased 1680 hectares of alive dunes located next to
the sea. It was a fringe of about 10 Km on the beach and
1600 meters depth.
His main objective was to get the necessary wood to supply
to the articles for babies factory "Casa Gesell" placed
in Punta Chica (Nowadays it is one of the "Tren de la Costa"
Stations. It was necessary to fix "that dessert of flying
sands", against all the adverse conditions. Carlos was sure
that he would reach his aim, he had checked the dunes and
he realized that they stored sweet water, coming from the
rains, and it was of course a success indication.
Juancho was the nearest railway station, it was placed
to 22 Km from the acquired area. All the tools and the other
elements that were necessary to work on those dunes arrived
there weekly or each fortnight. They were taken from there
to where nowadays Villa Gesell is. By that time there were
no roads, so, it was a very hard task to reach the dunes.
Together with these materials (seeds, black land, fertilizers,
etc) the first trees were planted to about a kilometer from
the sea.
A store house was settled to give housing to the workers.
This was Villa Gesell's first construction (Nowadays, it
can be seen inside the California Camping site placed in
the northern area of the city).
These 1680 hectares of "alive dunes" were spare fiscal
lands that Don Carlos bought to the State. By that time,
the measurement of the lands was carried out, because the
area's land-owners didn't know the real limits of their
properties. Therefore, there were a lot of problems with
the land-owners and farmers. In fact, there weren't so much
tax exemptions as the land owners thought and, as a consequence
they had to give something to the state.. They had to opt
between giving fertile lands or dunes, so they decided to
give those 180 Km of alive dunes that go from Punta Rasa
to Mar Chiquita.
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