Santa Rosa

Introducing Santa Rosa

About 600km from Buenos Aires – and a long way from pretty much anywhere else – Santa Rosa is unlikely to be of interest unless you find yourself traveling overland, in which case it’s a convenient stopping point and transport hub. While Santa Rosa itself offers scant charms, it serves as a base for exploring Parque Nacional Lihué Calel, an isolated but pretty park that’s home to a surprising assortment of vegetation and wildlife.

The area’s native people were displaced, and many thousands killed, during General Roca’s ‘Conquest of the Desert’ in 1879, but La Pampa is still home to the Ranquel people, who have regained some of their traditional lands and maintain their language and culture.

The city was founded in 1892 by French, Spanish and Italian immigrants who arrived with the expansion of the railroads at the turn of the 19th century. But one measure of Santa Rosa’s continuing isolation and insignificance is that until 1951 the surrounding area ­remained a territory rather than a province.

Santa Rosa is also a university town, with the University of La Pampa attracting students from around the region.

Last updated: Feb 17, 2009