Rio Cuarto - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

RIO CUARTO, a town of Argentina in the province of Cordoba, 119 m. S. of the city of that name, and about 500 m. N.W. of Buenos Aires. Pop. (1904, estimate) 12,000. It stands 1440 ft. above sea-level and about half-way across the great Argentine pampas, on the banks of a river of the same name which finds an outlet through the Carcaranal into the Parana near Rosario. The town is built on the open plain and is surrounded with attractive suburbs. It is the commercial centre of a large district and has a large and lucrative trade. Its geographical position gives it great strategical importance, and the government maintains here a large arsenal and a garrison of the regular army. The surrounding country belongs to the partially arid pampa region and is devoted to stockraising - cattle, horses, sheep and goats. Irrigation is employed in its immediate vicinity. Previous to 1872 this region was overrun by the Ranqueles, a warlike tribe of Indians, but the vigorous reprisals of General Ivanovski in that year, supplemented by the tactful intervention of the Franciscan missionaries, who have a convent in this town, put an end to these hostile forays and gave full opportunity for the industrial development of the country. There are some manufacturing industries in the town. The National Andine railway passes through Rio Cuarto, and branch lines connect with the Buenos Aires and Pacific line - all of which give railway communication with Buenos Aires, Rosario, Tucuman, Cordoba, San Luis and Mendoza.