Pucallpa

Pucallpa is the capital of Peru's Ucayali Region, Coronel Portillo Province, and Calleria District, on the Ucayali River, a major Amazon tributary, at an elevation of about 154 meters. Franciscan missionaries founded the settlement in the 1840s alongside Shipibo-Conibo indigenous communities, and it grew rapidly after 1945 once a highway to Lima through Tingo Maria ended its geographic isolation. The 2017 census recorded 211,611 residents, making Pucallpa Peru's tenth most populated city and the second largest in the Peruvian Amazon after Iquitos. In the 1980s it expanded into a conurbation with the neighboring towns of Puerto Callao and San Fernando, and its economy today centers on trade, the timber industry, and tourism.