Nombre de Jesús was a Spanish town in Patagonia, settled in 1584 by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in the Magellan Strait. Nombre de Jesús also refers to the archaeological site located in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, where the remains of this settlement were found.
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The project of fortifying the Magellan Strait became one of the most tragic stories in the Spanish colonization of the Americas at the end of the 16th century. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa who was in charge of the expedition landed over 300 settlers at the very end of South America. Of these there was only one survivor. Ciudad del Nombre de Jesús was one of the two towns settled by this expedition in 1584 in the Magellan Strait. The other one named Ciudad del Rey Don Felipe is known as Port Famine after the visit of Thomas Cavendish in 1587.[1]
Despite numerous attempts to locate the remains of the Nombre de Jesus town, the archaeological site was only discovered in 2003 by the research team headed by Dr. Maria Ximena Senatore of Universidad de Buenos Aires and CONICET (Argentina).