Sarmiento, Chubut

Sarmiento is a town in the province of Chubut, Argentina. It has about 8,000 inhabitants as per the, and is the head town of the department of the same name. It is located on the so-called Central Corridor of Patagonia, in a fertile valley amidst an otherwise arid region, 140 km west from Comodoro Rivadavia, in the south of Chubut. It sits between two lakes, Lake Musters and Lake Colhue Huapi. Notable attractions are the Petrified Forest and caves with Aborigine hand paintings.

History
Sarmiento was born as a colony of immigrants, mainly from Wales (see y Wladfa). In the early 1900s it also experienced an influx of immigrants from Lithuania.

In 1900, Argentine authority was locally established when the Swedish former sailor Oscar Lundqwist, who had been appointed police commissioner to Sarmiento, set up the first "comisaría" ever in Sarmiento. It was situated next to "Las Tres Casas" where the Jones families from Wales and the Briton Pryce lived.

In 1903, 600 Afrikaner families arrived in Argentina following the loss of the Second Boer War. They settled in the region as it had access to water unlike the coastal city of Comodoro Rivadavia where they first settled. The descendants of these colonists make up a large portion of the population of Sarmiento and still speak Afrikaans and attend the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk ("Dutch Reformed Church") to this day. As recently as the 1960s Afrikaans was the most commonly spoken language however this has changed as the town's Afrikaans population has become more assimilated into Argentinian culture and society.

In 2016, an important fossil dinosaur was discovered near the town. It is named Sarmientosaurus musacchio in honor of the town and of the late Dr. Eduardo Musacchio, a paleontologist and professor at the National University of Patagonia San Juan Bosco.

Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, Sarmiento features a cold desert climate (Köppen climate classification: BWk), with warm summers and cool winters. The coldest temperature at low elevation ever recorded in South America, -32.8 C, was recorded in Sarmiento on June 1, 1907. Precipitation is low, averaging only 183 mm per year.