The Casuchas del Rey or Casuchas de la Cordillera are a string of small

mountain shelter A mountain hut is a building located high in the mountains, generally accessible only by foot, intended to provide food and shelter to mountaineers, climbers and hikers. Mountain huts are usually operated by an Alpine Club or some organization d ...

s made of stone masonry along the route of the

Uspallata Pass The Uspallata Pass, Bermejo Pass or Cumbre Pass, is an Andean pass which provides a route between the wine-growing region around the Argentine city of Mendoza, the Chilean city Los Andes and Santiago, the Chilean capital situated in the central ...

of the

Principal Cordillera Principal Cordillera ( es, Cordillera Principal) is the Andean mountain range that makes up the boundary between Central Chile and neighbouring areas of Argentina. It is also a continental divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific watersheds. I ...

in the Andes of Chile and Argentina. The shelters were built to improve the intra-colonial postal system of the Spanish Empire. The shelters were created following the designs of

Ambrosio O'Higgins Ambrosio Bernardo O'Higgins y O'Higgins, 1st Marquess of Osorno (c. 1720 – 19 March 1801) born Ambrose Bernard O'Higgins (''Ambrós Bearnárd Ó hUiginn'', in Irish), was an Irish-Spanish colonial administrator and a member of the O'Higgins fa ...

in 1766 at a time when Cuyo was still part of the

Captaincy General of Chile The Captaincy General of Chile (''Capitanía General de Chile'' ) or Governorate of Chile (known colloquially and unofficially as the Kingdom of Chile), was a territory of the Spanish Empire from 1541 to 1817 that was, for most of its existenc ...

. Each shelter had a capacity for about thirty persons and stock of supplies inside. This included

yerba mate Yerba mate or yerba-maté (''Ilex paraguariensis''; from Spanish ; pt, erva-mate, or ; gn, ka'a, ) is a plant species of the holly genus ''Ilex'' native to South America. It was named by the French botanist Augustin Saint-Hilaire. The leav ...

as mate was highly valued by those who frequented the cold Andean highlands. Two events are credited to have triggered the construction of the mountain shelters, first O'Higgins near-death while crossing the Andes in 1763 and the Seven Years' War that made improvements to overland communication an imperative as seaborne communications between Buenos Aires and Lima could be intercepted and while the traditional route across

Potosí Potosí, known as Villa Imperial de Potosí in the colonial period, is the capital city and a municipality of the Department of Potosí in Bolivia. It is one of the highest cities in the world at a nominal . For centuries, it was the location o ...

was overly long. German painter

Johann Moritz Rugendas Johann Moritz Rugendas (29 March 1802 – 29 May 1858) was a German painter, famous in the first half of the 19th century for his works depicting landscapes and ethnographic subjects in several countries in the Americas. Rugendas is considered " ...

crossed the Andes in 1835 following the Casuchas del Rey. The 60 paintings and sketches he made on his way have served to locate the remains of the shelters.

References

Argentina–Chile border Buildings and structures in Valparaíso Region Buildings and structures in Mendoza Province 18th-century establishments in the Captaincy General of Chile 1766 establishments in South America Postal history Mendoza Province Mountain huts in Argentina Mountain huts in Chile History of Valparaíso Region Principal Cordillera Buildings and structures completed in 1766 {{Argentina-struct-stub