The Ruins of Villa Epecuen

Back in the 1920s, a tourist village was established along the shore of Lago Epecuen, a salt lake some 600 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The resort town, named Villa Epucuen, soon had a railroad station, and it thrived for several decades, peaking in the 1970s with a population of more than 5,000. Around the same time, a long-term weather event was delivering far more rain than usual to the surrounding hills for years, and Lago Epecuen began to swell. In 1985, the salty waters broke through an earthen dam, and Villa Epecuen was doomed. A slow-growing flood consumed the town until it reached a depth of 10 meters (33 feet) in 1993. The wet weather later reversed, and the waters began to recede in 2009. AFP photographer Juan Mabromata recently visited the ruins of Villa Epecuen, met its sole inhabitant, and returned with these images.

Read more
Hints: View this page full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ←/→.

Most Recent

  • Lukasz Nowak1 / Getty
    • In Focus
    • April 24, 2024
    • 30 Photos

    Chile’s Amazing National Parks

    Images of several of Chile’s national parks, encompassing a wide variety of environments

  • Juan Carlos Vindas / Getty
    • In Focus
    • April 22, 2024
    • 30 Photos

    For Earth Day, a Photo Appreciation of Birds

    A handful of images of the tens of billions of individual animals divided among some 10,000 species, inhabiting nearly every environment on Earth

  • AFP / Getty
    • In Focus
    • April 19, 2024
    • 35 Photos

    Photos of the Week: Burning Bull, Blue Forest, Olympic Flame

    Eid al-Fitr prayers in India, trophy winners at the Boston Marathon, the burning of a historic building in Denmark, a joyous water festival in Thailand, and much more

  • Adem Altan / Agence France-Presse
    • In Focus
    • April 18, 2024
    • 21 Photos

    Winners of the 2024 World Press Photo Contest

    Some of the winning and honored entries in this year’s annual photo competition

Most Popular on The Atlantic

  1. The Story That’s Holding Taylor Swift Back
  2. Tesla Is Not the Next Ford. It’s the Next Con Ed.
  3. How the Campus Left Broke Higher Education
  4. The Republicans Who Want American Carnage
  5. It’s the End of the Web as We Know It
  6. The Inflation Plateau
  7. Columbia Has Resorted to Pedagogy Theater
  8. The Point of Having a Spiritual Quest
  9. The Unreality of Columbia’s ‘Liberated Zone’
  10. The J. D. Vance I Knew
Back to Top