Steel towers march up the mountainside above Chilecito, a chain of them climbing toward a mine that has been silent for nearly a century. This is the Cable Carril, an aerial tramway built between 1902 and 1905 to carry gold-bearing copper ore down from the La Mejicana mine, high in the Sierra de Famatina. In its day it was the longest and highest cableway of its kind on Earth: more than 34 kilometers of cable strung across 260 towers, climbing 3,345 vertical meters into the thin air of the Andes. The ore wagons stopped running in 1927. The towers never came down.
The contract was signed on 31 July 1902 with Adolf Bleichert & Co. of Leipzig, the German firm that more or less invented the modern aerial ropeway. Bleichert designed and manufactured the entire system, stations, towers, pulleys, and all, then shipped it across an ocean and assembled it against one of the most punishing gradients imaginable. The cableway overcame a height difference of 3,345 meters between Chilecito on the valley floor and the La Mejicana mine near the summit, a climb that no road or railway could have managed. It ran in nine sections, with engine houses spaced along the route to keep the cable moving, and it operated from 1905 until 1927. Today it is a National Historic Monument, and the ascending line of rusted towers remains one of the most striking sights in all of La Rioja.
The town's name translates, fondly, to "Little Chile." By one well-known account, it honors the wave of Chilean artisan miners, known as pirquineros, who crossed the cordillera to work the gold fields of Famatina. They brought their skills, their language, and their methods, and the place took its identity from them. Chilecito sits cradled in a valley between two ranges, the Sierras de Velazco to the east and the Sierras de Famatina to the west, and mining was its lifeblood through the close of the 19th century. The Cable Carril was the climax of that era, the moment a remote Andean mining town reached for world-class engineering. When the ore ran out, the town turned to the thing that had sustained it all along: the patient work of the irrigated land.
Water makes Chilecito possible. The town survives as an oasis of irrigation, fed by canals and supplemented from underground sources, and much of that water goes to grapevines. Wine is the most significant industry here, and the wineries draw on a high-desert terroir of intense sun and cool nights. Walnut and fruit trees grow in the same green margins, their harvests processed locally. With 58,798 inhabitants recorded in the 2022 INDEC census, including the surrounding localities of Anguinán, Malligasta, San Miguel, Los Sarmientos, and La Puntilla, Chilecito is among the larger towns of La Rioja. The contrast is constant and beautiful: rows of vines and orchards spread across the valley floor, while the bare, ore-streaked mountains rise on either side.
Chilecito also shaped one of Argentina's notable public figures. Joaquín V. González, the educator, lawyer, senator, governor, and historian, grew up in the area and returned in his later years to a home he built nearby. He called it Samay Huasi, from the Quechua for "rest house," and the name suits it: a retreat among the foothills, gardens and stone giving onto the mountains. González eventually donated the property to the University of La Plata as a refuge for artists, and it serves that purpose still. It is a fitting legacy for a town that has always lived between extremes, between the height of the mine and the depth of the valley, between the labor of extraction and the quiet of the vineyard.
Chilecito lies at 29.17°S, 67.50°W in a north-south valley of La Rioja Province, northwestern Argentina, flanked by the Sierras de Velazco to the east and the towering Sierra de Famatina to the west, whose peaks exceed 6,000 meters. The valley floor sits near 1,000 meters, so a viewing altitude of 14,000-18,000 feet works well, with terrain rising sharply to the west; the Famatina massif is a dramatic visual landmark. From altitude, look for the green irrigated oasis of vineyards and orchards on the valley floor against the bare, mineral-streaked slopes. The historic Cable Carril towers climb the western range toward the old La Mejicana mine. The nearest major airport is La Rioja's Capitán Vicente Almandos Almonacid Airport (ICAO SANL), roughly 100 km to the southeast. Skies are typically clear and dry with strong daytime convection over the sierras.