The origin of the city of Puerto Varas dates to 1853 and is named after
Antonio Varas, the Minister of the Interior at the time. It was founded by German immigrants who settled the shores of Lake Llanquihue as part of a
government colonization project during the presidency of
Manuel Montt (1851-1861). The area known as the "Llanquihue Lake Colonization Territory" was created by the government on 27 June 1853, and by the end of 1853, the first 212 German families had immigrated to what would be Puerto Varas. Another group was made up of
Sudeten German settlers from
Braunau,
Bohemia (current
Czech Republic) on 15 August 1877; they established and settled a village called
Nueva Braunau, literally "New Braunau". The first area to be settled was known as La Fabrica, where the road from Puerto Montt and the coast reached Llanquihue Lake. Other landmarks in its early history include the opening of a
Catholic church in 1872 and the founding of the Deutscher Verein ("German Club") in 1885. The town received official status in the form of a Título de Villa ("Town Certification") in 1897. The
commune of Puerto Varas, as it exists today, was formed in December 1925, when the Ministry of the Interior divided the country into
provinces, and
communes. ==Demographics==