The city of Frutillar was founded by Vicente P�rez Rosales in 1856, after a period of clearing up the land and upon the arrival of German settlers from Hamburg in 1852 and other cities of Germany in sailing ships to the ports of Valdivia and Puerto Montt.
Vicente Perez Rosales on a later expedition towards the south of Valdivia changed the course of the incoming colony to Lake Llanquihue. Rosales was searching for more land for the German settlers, south of Valdivia, as many sailing ships were arriving to the port of Valdivia from Germany sent by Bernardo Philippi under the official colonisation program of Southern Chile. This program was granted by President Manuel Bulnes and executed by president of Chile Manuel Montt naming officially Vicente Perez Rosales the head of the German colonisation of Llanquihue, as a continuation of the initial efforts done by Bernard Philippi.
Rosales, reached the lake through the dense wild forest and climed to Osorno Volcano and at the height of 2,000 meters he was able to see the ocean to the south where he saw sailing ships navigating. It was the chilotes from Chiloe that had been sailing in the inner waters of Puerto Monttsince 1550 and came mainly from Galicia Spain, which has very similar climate conditions. He immediately informed this issue to the port of Valdivia and thus, from there on, the settlers started their incoming trough Puerto Montt and travelled by land to Puerto Varas where other ships would sail the shores of lake Llanquihue to Frutillar and Puerto Octay.
A quote of the time illustrates the discovery of lake Llanquihue during its first sighting by Philippi "The water of this lake is as clear as that of Geneva in Switzerland, its surface is about seven leagues long and one league wide, so I could not distinguish the opposite bank. On one hand, it has the snowy Alps, the Andes Mountain that rises from its eastern banks of a volcano covered with snow up to half of its height and goes into its
