ter, Member of Parliament, minister, and politician, bought a 300-hectare (740-acre) tract of land, and named it La Posada, in 1885. At the time, it was merely a set of thick-walled barracks.
Agust�n Ross turned Pichilemu into a summer resort town for affluent people from Santiago. He designed an urban setting that included a parkand a forest of over 10 hectares (25 acres). He transformed La Posada into a hotel, named Gran Hotel Pichilemu, which has since been renamed to Hotel Agust�n Ross. He built the Ross Casino (currently a cultural center), several chalets, terraces, embankments, stone walls, abalcony facing the beach, and several large homes with building materials and furniture imported from France and England. However, Ross was not able to build the dock he had planned for the city. He died in 1926 in Vi�a del Mar. Agust�n Ross' inheritors donated all of his constructions (streets, avenues, squares, seven hectares of forests, the park in front of the hotel, the perrons, the balcony, and the terraces) to the Municipality of Pichilemu, on the condition that the municipality would hold them for recreation and public access. The Agust�n Ross Casino, constructed in 1905, and the Agust�n Ross Park, constructed in 1885, have since become an important part of the city, and have been declared Monumentos Hist�ricos (Historic Monuments) by the National Monuments Council.
After the creation of the Cardenal Caro Province, by decree of General Augusto Pinochet on October 3, 1979, Pichilemu became its capital.The province is named after the first Chilean Catholic Cardinal, Jos� Mar�a Caro Rodr�guez, who was born in Pichilemu.
Pichilemu was severely affected by the February 27, 2010, Chile earthquake and its subsequent tsunami, which provoked massive destruction in the coastal zone. On March 11, 2010, at 11:39:41 (14:39:41 UTC), a magnitude 6.9 earthquake occurred 15 kilometres (9 mi) northwest of Pichilemu, killing one person
