History

Of all the Buenos Aires Province ranches that are open to tourists, Juan Gerónimo - hidden away 165 km. southeast of Buenos Aires near Verónica - is the one that most deftly combines the history of a country with that of an unusual family.
The sand dunes separating the flat pampa from the mud flats of Samborombón Bay had disappeared under ferns and "tala" forest even before repeated Indian raids sent the surviving settlers of the Magdalena district scurrying back to Buenos Aires in the late 1700's.
But the settlers returned time and again, and were finally able to sleep peacefully after Julio Argentino Roca terminated with the Indian problem in 1879 and initiated his first term as president the following year.

An English bandit ?

In the early 1800's, before the advent of Roca's law and order, a shipwrecked Englishman called White walked in from the bay coast and made banditry his livelihood in the district. As the story goes, he hispanicized his name to "Juan Gerónimo Blanco" (so his name would be correctly pronounced by locals)?
Another story has it that the 30-metre-high dune-hills were the digs of a rogue gaucho called Juan Gerónimo. Hence the name of the estate to which they belonged.
After a few property successions and sales, the 10,365-hectare Juan Gerónimo ranch was purchased by Ernesto Tornquist, businessman and rancher of Swedish descent.
His daughter María Luisa, married to Benjamín Muniz Barreto, a naturalist and archaeology buff from another landholding family, of Portuguese descent, inherited the ranch.
And the couple set about making it a model Tudor-style rural establishment that looks more like a village than a farm.

· There is a very interesting article published in the newspaper “El Día” from La Plata, which says that Jorge Newbery landed in the Estancia with his aerostat balloon, in one of his attempts to cross the River Plate (08/13/1911).

· Ernesto Tornquist, the founder of the actual ranch in the year 1901, was of Swedish origin, and employed in the early days a Swedish gentleman named Evert Taube to help build the channels in Samborombón. This ranch hand later became one of the most famous poets and songwriters of his homeland, for his great artwork and the charm of his American adventures.

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