Epecuén, abandoned town in Argentina - December 2014

Lenzo · Jan 3, 2015

This is my first post here so forgive the lack of quality in the report or in the photos, hopefully I'll improve over time.

I went to visit this site at the beginning of December on a trip to Buenos Aires. The site is about 300 miles from the city, we drove down to get there. There's another small town only a few miles away so it's very easy to stay the night over and not have to rush anything.

Unlike most places here on the forum, the site is open for visitors but since it is fairly remote and relatively unknown even in Argentina, there wasn't a single soul during our visit and felt nothing like a tourist attraction.

Epecuén is an entire town that was flooded in the 70s and about 10 years ago, the water began to subside, revealing the town once again. The amazing thing is that water has destroyed nearly everything there so that you only have the rubble of the buildings and as far as I could tell, next to no objects survived the disaster.

A friend who I went with had been there several years before and he had noticed that many of the buildings' structures that once stood upright had now collapsed in on themselves, so we were vary wary to walk into any of the buildings (I'm hoping to pluck up a bit more courage for future visits to sites!)

We also met an elderly man called Pablo Novak who is the town's only resident. He spoke to us for several hours, telling us all about the history of the place and his own memories of the town before it became submerged. When we first noticed him, it was like something out of a film: he drove up on his bicycle with his dog running beside him, walked up to one of the buildings and climbed to the first floor and simply took out his newspaper and started reading it, like I'm sure he does every day.

We spent a good while there and I luckily managed to take some lovely photos as the sun set over the town. Perhaps the most fascinating thing is that the local government decided to maintain the site there as a sign of respect to those who lived there before rather than simply tearing it down and building anew. Fortunately, no one actually died the disaster as the water levels rose slowly which gave people time to evacuate, but thousands of livelihoods were destroyed forever.

Here's a little more about the history of the town:

Villa Epecuén was a tourist village that was located in the Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Now abandoned, its ruins are found on the eastern shore of the Laguna Epecuén, about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) north of the city of Carhué.

Developed in the early 1920s, Epecuén was accessible from Buenos Aires by train. The Ferrocarril Sarmiento line served the Villa Epecuén station, while the Midland Railway and the Southern Railway carried passengers to nearby Carhué station.[2]

Tourism was well developed in Epecuén, as vacationers from Buenos Aires would seek the therapeutic salty waters of Lago Epecuén. At its height, Villa Epecuén had the capacity to accommodate 5,000 visitors,[3] while unofficial accommodations allowed for 2000 more.[citation needed]

On 6 November 1985, a seiche caused by a rare weather pattern broke a nearby dam first, then the dike protecting the town. Rapidly made uninhabitable, the town saw the waters rise progressively, reaching up to 10 metres (33 ft) at its maximum. The village was never rebuilt.

At the time of the catastrophe, there were up to 280 businesses in Epecuén, including lodges, guesthouses, hotels, and businesses that 25,000 tourists visited between November and March, from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The town reached a population of 1,500 inhabitants at its peak. The town now has a sole resident, Pablo Novak, who returned to his home when the waters receded after covering the town for 25 years.