While the environmental impact of infrastructure is often assumed to be in its active construction, completion, and functioning, for one mountain community in Chile, Los Andes, construction delays brought drastic change. Throughout the 1890s, as construction slowed to a standstill, Los Andes stood toward the end of the line. This meant that passengers traveling across the mountains had to stay the night as they transitioned between the end of the line and the mule trains that transported them between Argentine and Chilean railroad networks, providing hotel and restaurant owners with business. The result was not merely bustling hotel lobbies in town but also an increased opportunity for economic elites to reimagine urban and rural environments.
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how property owners in Los Andes used construction delays of the Transandine Railway in the 1890s to embark on a speculative property boom in the town based on its strategic position in the railroad’s schedule. I contend that they aimed to use this boom as part of attempts to revive and develop agricultural sectors, such as the wheat and the viticultural sectors, and further conflicts over issues of water access both in the town and in agricultural lands. This dynamic reveals the intimate relationship between urban and rural environmental histories while making a case for shifting attention away from active construction and completed infrastructure toward infrastructural delays as productive moments in history.