Early career Luis Huergo was born in
Buenos Aires, in 1837, to a family of prosperous retailers. He was sent to the
Jesuit Mount St. Mary's University previously known as Mount St. Mary's College, where he obtained his secondary education from 1852 to 1857. Returning to Argentina, he assisted urbanist
Pedro Benoit plan the first road to
Ensenada (a harbor town 56 km (35 mi) south of Buenos Aires) and earned a degree as a
surveyor from the Topography and Geodesics School of Buenos Aires, in 1862. Huergo was among the first class to enroll at the
School of Engineering created by the Rector of the
University of Buenos Aires,
Juan María Gutiérrez, in 1866, and four years later, his thesis on the value of roads earned him the school's first engineering degree. Huergo designed
flood control projects for the torrential
Tercero River and other
Córdoba Province waterways. He also designed 120
railroad bridges during his early career, as well as the harbor of the city of
San Fernando. Huergo co-founded the
Argentine Scientific Society in 1872 and the Argentine Geographic Institute, in 1879. He taught at the newly created School of Mathematics of the University of Buenos Aires from 1874, and was designated its dean in 1881.
The port Huergo's plans to build a house at the mouth of the
Riachuelo River flowing along Buenos Aires' industrial southside earned him the appointment of Director of the Riachuelo Works Bureau in 1876. This powerful post enabled him to develop the Port of
La Boca, the first modern port in Buenos Aires. The port's opening in 1880 coincided with a sudden economic boom in Argentina, and the Provincial Legislature awarded him a generous budget for improvements, including a
breakwater and the
dredging of the silty Riachuelo mouth to 6.5 m (21 ft). His ambitious proposal for a massive, new port north of the one at
La Boca received initial support in the
Argentine Congress, though the backing of Argentina's main financier (
Barings Bank) for a proposal put forth by local
import-export mogul
Eduardo Madero helped sway congre ssional support away from Huergo's proposal. Madero's project was approved by Congress in 1882. Huergo appealed the decision on the grounds that it would be uneconomical to build and difficult to modify, once new, larger freighters began to arrive. Madero's project was signed into law by President
Julio Roca in 1884, however, and in 1886, Huergo resigned his post at the Riachuelo Bureau. Luis Huergo did not live to see the new port's completion, and he died in 1913, at age 76. His port design solved the very limitations he had anticipated for the former facility, and his many and early contributions to his country's infrastructure made him Argentina's "first engineer." ==References and external links==