History
Villa María was founded on 27 September 1867 by Manuel Anselmo Ocampo, a young Porteño belonging to a wealthy family that then went on to become a Buenos Aires provincial senator and minister, founded by Italians (170 families), Germans (57 families), and English (10 families) immigrants. The town grew up around the train station on the Central Argentine Railway's line between Rosario and Cordoba which was completed 1870. In 1875 it became an important railway junction when the Ferrocarril Andino opened a line linking it to Villa Mercedes, and later to San Juan and Mendoza.
In 1871 the city was even declared Capital of the Republic by the National Congress, but the law was vetoed by President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento on the grounds that the site was subject to attacks by aboriginal tribes and therefore unsafe for the authorities.
The town became officially a municipality in 1883. Its first mayor was Pedro Viñas. It only had 825 inhabitants, but it grew so fast that by 1915 it had more than 10,000. Villa María became the seat of a Catholic diocese under Pope Pius XII, in 1957.
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