At 53°54' south latitude, where the continent of South America finally gives out and the Drake Passage begins, there is a place called Cape Froward. It is the southernmost point of the mainland Americas — not counting Tierra del Fuego's island arc — and it is, by almost any measure, one of the most remote and beautiful places on Earth.
In December 2024, Chile officially declared it a national park.
Cabo Froward National Park — Chile's **43rd national park** — protects approximately **121,000 hectares** (roughly 300,000 acres) of wilderness in the Magallanes region, at the far southern tip of Chilean Patagonia. Donated in part by **Rewilding Chile**, the conservation organisation co-founded by the late **Doug Tompkins** and his wife **Kristine Tompkins** to protect vast swaths of Chilean wilderness, the park represents the completion of something much larger than a single protected area.
**Completing the Corridor**
For years, conservationists have been working toward what they call the **Route of Parks of Patagonia** — a connected network of national parks and protected areas running from Puerto Montt in southern Chile to Cape Froward at the continent's tip. With the creation of the new park, that vision is now substantially complete: a wildlife corridor stretching approximately **2,800 kilometres** through some of the world's most spectacular and least-disturbed temperate wilderness.
For species that need large, connected landscapes to survive — jaguars, pumas, huemul deer, Andean condors — corridors are not optional. Isolated reserves become islands: too small for viable populations, too separated for genetic exchange, too fragile against local catastrophes. The Route of Parks aims to knit Chile's protected areas into a single functional landscape where wildlife can move, populations can mix, and ecosystems can operate at the scale they require.
**What the Park Protects**
Cabo Froward's landscape is extraordinary and botanically unique. It protects:
🌿 **Subantarctic forests** — among the southernmost forests on Earth, dominated by Nothofagus species (southern beeches) adapted to the fierce Patagonian weather. These are ancient, dense, and globally rare.
🌱 **Magellanic peatlands** — the vast, soggy blanket bogs that store enormous quantities of carbon accumulated over thousands of years. Patagonian peatlands are among the most carbon-dense terrestrial ecosystems anywhere.
🌊 **Coastal and marine habitat** — the park's shoreline shelters **humpback whales, southern right whales, sea lions, dolphins**, and extraordinary seabird colonies along coasts that see few human visitors.
🦌 **The huemul deer** — Chile's national animal, critically endangered due to centuries of hunting and habitat loss. Fewer than 2,000 individuals survive. The remote terrain of Cape Froward is among the few places left where they exist with minimal human pressure.
**Donated by Rewilding Chile**
The Tompkins Conservation legacy is central to this story. Doug Tompkins — the outdoor gear entrepreneur who founded The North Face and Esprit — spent the latter decades of his life acquiring and donating vast tracts of Chilean and Argentine land for conservation. He died in a kayaking accident in Patagonia in 2015, and Kristine Tompkins has continued the work. Their combined donations to Chile total **approximately 1 million hectares** — land that has been incorporated into national parks, permanently protected.
The land that forms Cabo Froward National Park includes a donation from Rewilding Chile — continuing the tradition of private conservation philanthropy that has made Chile a global leader in the creation of protected areas from private foundations.
**Named One of 52 Places to Visit in 2026**
The New York Times, in its annual list of places to visit, named Cabo Froward one of **52 places to see in 2026** — a designation that will bring the park to the attention of global travellers who might never otherwise have heard of it.
For the Chilean tourism industry, the Route of Parks is already an emerging asset: a network of wild, dramatic, genuinely remote destinations that appeal to the growing segment of travellers seeking authentic wilderness rather than crowded landmarks. Tourist revenue from park visitors flows back into conservation and local communities — a virtuous cycle that makes protection economically sustainable.
**The End of the World, Properly Protected**
There is something quietly profound about this particular park. Cape Froward is where the continent stops. It is the end of the land. For millennia, indigenous peoples lived in these waters — the Kawésqar, who navigated these channels in bark canoes, were among the last nomadic peoples of the southern seas. Most of that world is gone. But the land and sea that sustained it for thousands of years is now, formally, protected.
One corridor. 2,800 kilometres. A line of parks from the forests of the Lake District to the edge of Antarctica. And at its southernmost point: a new park, wild and intact, where whales blow in the channels and pumas move through forests that have no roads. 🐋🦌
*Sources: Rewilding Chile (rewildingchile.org) · Tompkins Conservation · The Guardian (December 2025) · New York Times 52 Places 2026 · Andesviva.com · Chile Ministry of Environment · chile.travel*
