After a period of clearing up the land, the city of Frutillar was founded by German settlers in 1856, among them Christian Winkler, Wilhelm Kaschel, Heinrich Kuschel, Theodor Niklitschek, Christian Nannig, Christian Scheel and Adams Schmidt.
Vicente Pérez 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, officially naming Vicente Perez Rosales the head of the German colonisation of Llanquihue, as a continuation of the initial efforts by Bernard Philippi. Rosales reached the lake through the dense wild forest and climbed 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 Montt since 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 coming in through
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 waters" (Bernardo Philippi, 1842). This illustrates the period when Philippi discovered
Lake Llanquihue and its similarity with
Lake Geneva in Switzerland. This information was given to the German settler in order to describe them the beauty of the region. It took over 10 years to be able to bring all the settlers from Germany to Chile and establish the first colonisation program in
Lake Llanquihue. Although
Bernhard Eunom Philippi discovered it in 1842, when he was exploring the region with the
Chilean army, he brought the idea to the
Chilean government that the Southern Region of Chile would be best developed by bringing German settlers that were having a hard time in Germany due to the
Industrial Revolution and had plans to migrate to
America. This opportunity to attract German families to immigrate to Chile had to be done. The combined effort of Bernhard Eunom Philippi with Vicente Pérez Rosales, made the colonisation a reality and proved to be a success, as the region later was very well developed in agricultural and forestry, with European technology. Also
German schools proved to be the best in the Southern region of Chile. == Local attractions ==