Exploring the Site of the Anglican Mission Settlement in Ushuaia

Visiting what's now just a grassy field with a few signs

You could easily visit Ushuaia, explore the city attentively, and never see anything about the Anglican missionaries who were the first non-natives to settle there. What was once a whole village that drew the attention of any ships passing through the Beagle Channel is now an empty, grassy field. The site would be easy to miss, even if you knew where it was and were specifically looking for it. As I was.

It took me a few tries, but I eventually found the right spot on the peninsula the native Yahgans called Tushcapalan, jutting into the bay of Ushuwaia.

This is the precise, real-world place where much of the action in my novel happens, and I took in as much as I could with wide eyes.

A panorama of the field and sign on the edge of the city

Over the course of my stay in Ushuaia, as I met more and more people, I found that most long-time residents had heard of Thomas Bridges, but usually they associated him with Estancia Harberton, the sheep ranch he founded and which is still owned by his descendants. When I explained I was writing about the mission settlement in Ushuaia, a few people nodded and said, “Oh, yeah, there’s a neighborhood of military housing named after the mission, down by the bay.” But not everyone made that connection. Plenty of people assumed the “La misión” neighborhood was named for some Catholic mission that must have existed at some point, if they wondered about the name at all.