|
How did Don Carlos find out these
dunes?
According to the chronicles, Carlos Gesell and his family
went on holidays to Mar del Plata. There, he met with Hector
Manuel Guerrero, a wealthy landowner who was planting a
lot of trees on his lands, in front of the sea. It was the
place that nowadays is known as "Cariló". Guerrero had covered
the dunes with black land and he planted lots of pines.
He got it making a great investment and with many human
resources. This fact, mobilized Carlos' restless and creative
mind and he decided to go there to see those "alive dunes"
that Guerrero had told him that were placed to the south
of his lands. When he went there, he checked that there
was water stored in the dunes, so, he decided to buy those
1680 hectares, thinking that plants and trees could grow
helped by the man's hand.
 |
| 1933 |
So, he began his fight, a fight that would take him lots
of years of his life. He was never against Nature, on the
contrary he always fought to understand it and to take up
the arms that the same nature put before him. He loved it.
At the end of 1931, he built the first family house, that
nowadays houses the City's Museum and the Historical Archive.
The house was built very near the sea, on a 9 meters high
dune. He installed a mill to take out water. To build the
house Don Carlos used a system that he had watched in the
United States. It consisted of wooden double walls, recovered
with thick layers of plaster inside and outside. The empty
space between both walls was filled with newspaper paper
as a method to isolate the interiors from high and low temperatures.
 |
| 2001 |
The house had 4 entrance doors, each one faced a different
cardinal point. They allowed to have a free access, when
the sand piled up by the wind, blocked one or more of them.
From June 13th, 1991 it houses the Municipal Museum and
the Historical Archive, that depends on Villa Gesell's Municipality
Culture Direction.
From its windows it was possible to see thirty kilometers
of solitary beaches, and a lot of sand moving with the wind…
neither a single gramineous along that vast solitude. At
night the light projected by the Querandí Lighthouse could
be seen from there. It is placed to 32 Km from the house.
The wind whistling and the roaring sea were the only one
sounds that accompanied the Gesell's family for years.
Don Carlos began to project to plant trees in a big way,
so, in 1932 he contracted an agricultural engineer, Carl
Bodesheim, who had experienced with plantations in the North
Sea area. Bodesheim was impressed by the dunes, and he thought
that the place was such an inhospitable and aggressive one
that anything would never grow there… he made a mistake.
 Don
Carlos thought that the only one way of fixing the dunes
was by means of roots, but they had to grow. He tried with
a kind of a bush called "esparto". It is a gramineous of
about 1 meter high which has strong roots that go deeply
into the sand. He traced square perimeters of 10 x 10 meters
with "esparto" clumps, so 100 m2 of dune were fixed. Inside
them he showed a kind of a clover "melolitus alba", barley,
rye, etc. He asked for other seeds to Germany and to the
United States. The combined action of the "esparto" and
the "melolitus alba" that contributed to send nitrogen to
the sand was fixing the dunes.
A lot of white acacias, poplars, sallows and marine pines
were planted. To have an idea of this Dantesque work, it
is worthy to say that Don Carlos himself planted in 1933,
120.000 white acacias and marine pines (these are very sensitive
to the winds in the first stage of their growth). Nobody
wanted to go to that moor to plant in the sand. It was really,
his spiritual strength, his conviction and the pioneer blood
of a titan, what allowed him to go ahead, happily with a
future vision and mainly with a great faith in himself and
in his ideas.
Rosemarie, one of his daughters, says in her book "There
were murmurs along the area that said about a man, who lived
in a house in front of the sea, that tried to control the
dunes. He had been seen sowing down the rain with a hand-drill
machine. That man should be crazy. He was called the mad-man
of the dunes. Fortnight after fortnight, month after month,
he went to the dunes to plant with enthusiasm without being
defeated by the panorama of the dry plants. Boxcars and
boxcars full of marine pines were transported and planted
to twelve blocks from the sea. He was full of emotion when
he saw that some of them kept green. They didn't' grow,
but at least, they didn't dry off".
In 1933, he planted 120.00 trees; 100.00 of them were destroyed
by a strong "south-eastern wind". Newly in 1939, Don Carlos
got by means of a plant called "acacia trinervis", that
the pines grew in the sand without problems" This plant
is regarded as "the mother-plant of Villa Gesell's afforestation",
because it was used to protect the weaker species, such
as the pines. So, from 1939 onwards Don Carlos sew it everywhere.
It was brought from Australia via Germany (that had begun
the Second World War).
Carlos Gesell invented another method to sow these plants.
He made an equilateral triangle in the sand, and he planted
the acacias trinervis in the vertexes. He planted pines
inside the triangle. This way the acacias were the pines'
refuge in their first stage of growing, because the acacias
grew more quickly than the pines.
In 1938, Carlos Gesell separated from his wife Marta Tomys
and he united Emilia Luther, who accompanied him for the
rest of his life. By that time, Don Carlos Gesell renounced
to Casa Gesell, to carry out Villa Gesell's afforestation.
As time passed, his money was finishing so, he thought that
perhaps to build a house for renting to tourists would be
a good idea. He built it, it was called "La Golondrina"
(The Swallow). In 1940 he published a very peculiar ad in
"La Prensa de Buenos Aires" newspaper. It said more or less
this way: "Solitary house in front of the sea, is rented
for 15 days to $100 write to Carlos I. Gesell, Juancho Station.
South Railroad."
The ad was answered. Emilio Stark a business man from Swiss
origin, who lived in Buenos Aires, was interested in "La
Golondrina". Mr. Stark arrived at the place with his family
driving his car. Don Carlos went to look for them, or rather
to help them with a tractor. Mrs. Stark, who perhaps was
accustomed to another kind of vacations and comforts, became
furious and she ended up saying that they had been swindled.
She had her reasons to be this way because the road was
no more than mud, mosquitoes, gramineous and impressive
solitude. After this initial trouble, the Starks, according
to what the chronicles said, were so impressed by the wonderful
landscape that they expressed their happiness saying that
those had been the best vacations that they had ever had.
So, when they returned to Buenos Aires, they told about
this fantastic, natural, quiet place. Many people from the
German community began to approach to the dunes that by
the time had trees, and some pines.
 So,
from 1941 onwards Don Carlos thought in developing a coastal
city, different to Mar del Plata one. He wanted a resting
place for tourists who loved Nature. It was called " Villa
Silvio Gesell" in honor to his father. The first shares
were traced.
In 1942, the first inhabitants arrived. Most of them were
from German and Swiss origin, they were escaping from war.
They arrived in a kind of peaceful paradise. During the
first years, there was an authentic solidarity among them.
They helped each other to build their houses, and when it
was finished they put a sallow branch on the entrance door
to mean that at night there would be a barbecue to celebrate.
That was a true example of civic solidarity, characteristic
of people who loved progress in peace and harmony. That
was the Villa that Don Carlos had dreamt with. Later on,
a lot of Spanish and Italian immigrants went to settle there.
 In
1952, and due to the insistence of his wife, Emilia Luther,
Carlos Gesell moved to a chalet designed by himself, placed
to about 70 meters from the original house. Carlos Idaho
Gesell realized his dream. He died on June 6th, 1979, when
he was 88 years old, at the German Hospital in Buenos Aires
City. Before dying he stayed there for three weeks, even
at hospital he got up to make gym, and he had projects in
mind for fifty years ahead. One of them was to go to the
Sahara Desert to plant trees on a 20 hectares area. He was
perfectly lucid up to the last moment of his life. His mortal
remains rest in Villa Gesell's cemetery.
|
go