West Falkland

Beyond the Falkland Sound, which runs northeast–southwest, the west was the site of Britain’s first settlement, at Port Egmont on Saunders Island [1]. Nobody settled West Falkland proper, though, until J. L. Waldron founded a sheep station at Port Howard [2] in the late 1860s, and settlements like Fox Bay, Hill Cove [3], and Port Stephens [4] followed in short order.

Some of these farms remained in the same hands for over a century, while others became FIC property. Several offshore islands, some of them exceptional wildlife destinations, were home to small independent farmers; one of them, Keppel Island [5], witnessed a curious experiment in missionizing native people from Tierra del Fuego.

While the population of West Falkland has been declining since the agrarian reform of the 1980s, there’s hope that the improved road network and the establishment of Fox Bay Village, on the south coast, as a wool transshipment point, will revitalize the island.

The only other surviving large settlement, still run as a traditional sheep station, Port Howard has fewer than 20 permanent residents. One local humorist has suggested that it would be easy to repopulate the west by enforcing prohibition in Stanley [6] and declaring open licensing hours here.