explorations of Francisco Moreno and the campaigns of the Conquest of the Desert bought the area into the claims of the Argentine government which saw it as the natural expansion of the Viedma colony and the Andes as the natural frontier to Chile. In the 1881 border treaty between Chile and Argentina the Nahuel Huapi area was recognised as Argentine.
The modern settlement of Bariloche developed from a shop established by Carlos Wiederhold, a German immigrant that had settled in the area of Lake Llanquihue in Chile. Carlos Weiderhold then crossed the Andes and established a little shop called "La Alemana" (The German) near the present city center.
A small settlement developed around the shop, and by 1895 the settlement was primarily settled by Austrians, Germans, Slovenians, Chileans and Italians from the city of Belluno. It has been claimed that Bariloche got its name after the German-Chilean pioneer Carlos Wiederhold. In letters addressed to him, he was erroneously addressed as San Carlos instead of Don Carlos, which is why the city was called San Carlos de Bariloche. Most of the commerce in Bariloche went by the seaport of Puerto Montt in Chile. In 1896 Perito Morenowrote that it took three days to reach Puerto Montt from Bariloche while traveling to Viedma in the Atlantic coast took "one month or more".
In the 1930s the centre of the city was built to have the appearance of an alpine town ("Little Switzerland") with many buildings made of wood and stone. In 1909 there were 1,250 inhabitants, telegraph, post office, and a road connecting the city with Neuquén. Commerce, however, continued to depend on Chile until the arrival of the railroad in 1934.
Architectural development and tourism
Between 1935 and 1940, the Directorate of National Parks carried out a number of urban public works, giving the city a distinctive architectural pattern; among them, perhaps the best-known is the Civic Center.
