About 60 km south of Punta Arenas, Fuerte Bulnes is the reconstructed wooden stockade that marks the original Chilean settlement of Patagonia. In 1843, fearing the British would claim the strait, the Chilean government dispatched the schooner Ancud from Chiloé with a handful of soldiers and settlers; they built this fort on a windswept bluff above the water and held it for six bitter years before relocating to the present site of Punta Arenas.
The replica fort is built largely as it was — chapel, blockhouse, jail, officers' quarters, the lot — and stands inside the Parque del Estrecho de Magallanes, a small park with good information panels on the exploration of the strait. The drive down passes the Monumento a la Goleta Ancud and one of the bleakest, most extraordinary coastlines in the Americas.