Punta Arenas by Suk Choo Kim

Punta Arenas (English: "Sandy Point") is a commune and the capital city of Chile's southernmost region, Magallanes and Antartica Chilena. The city was officially renamed Magallanes in 1927, but in 1938 it was changed back to Punta Arenas. It is the largest city south of the 46th parallel south.
Sitting by the Strait of Magellan Punta Arenas was established originally as a tiny penal colony in 1848. During the rest of the 1800s, it became increasingly large and important as international trade across the straits grew and the countryside around experienced a gold rush and a sheep farming boom around 1900. Chile effectively used Punta Arenas to exert sovereignty in southernmost South America leading to the strait of Magellan being recognized as Chilean in the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina. The geopolitical importance of Punta Arenas has remained high in the 20th and 21st centuries as the city is important for logistics in the Antarctic peninsula.