Chimbote

Chimbote is a port city on the northwestern coast of Peru, on Ferrol Bay in the Ancash Region, about 130 kilometres south of Trujillo and 420 kilometres north of Lima along the Pan-American highway. It is the capital of Santa Province and of Chimbote District, the largest city in Ancash and the tenth most populous in the country, and it stands at an altitude of only 4 metres. The area was settled in turn by the Recuay, Moche, Wari, Chimor and Inca cultures. The name appears in an official document for the first time in 1774, when Chimbote was a small fishing village attached to Santa, and in 1835 it still had no more than 800 inhabitants. A railway agreement in 1871 and the Pan-American Highway in the 1930s opened it to the interior, and in the 1950s port activity, the Cañón de Pato hydroelectric plant and steel works made it a major industrial centre, after which overfishing, pollution and El Niño ended the fishing boom. The city then turned to agribusiness, tourism and commerce, and after Callao it is the second most important port in Peru.