General José de San Martín is a city in the north-east of the . It is named after José de San Martín

José de San Martín

José Francisco de San Martín, known simply as Don José de San Martín , was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America's successful struggle for independence from Spain.Born in Yapeyú, Corrientes , he left his mother country at the...

, the Argentine general that played a major role in South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

's fight for independence from Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 (see for example Argentine War of Independence

Argentine War of Independence

The Argentine War of Independence was fought from 1810 to 1818 by Argentine patriotic forces under Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli and José de San Martín against royalist forces loyal to the Spanish crown...

).

History

The town was founded with the name of El Zapallar on 25 April 1907, although the measurement and division of the terrain was properly finished on 2 July 1913. Its progress was slow due to the lack of communications, and began only in 1917, when Juan Godoy opened a precarious bus

Bus

A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...

 line that linked El Zapallar with Resistencia

Resistencia, Chaco

Resistencia is the capital and largest city in the province of Chaco, in northeastern Argentina. At the 2001 census, the population of the Resistencia city proper was 274,490 inhabitants. It is the anchor of a slightly larger metropolitan area, Greater Resistencia, which comprises three more...

, the provincial capital (120 km away).

By 1924 El Zapallar had 5,000 inhabitants and was the head town of the Toba Department. It had a police station, a court, a civil registration, a social club, and mail and telegraph services. That year featured the birth of El Zapallar Agricultural Cattleman Association. The Quijano railroad line also contributed to the growth of the town, by connecting it to Lapachito

Lapachito

Lapachito is a village and municipality in Chaco Province in northern Argentina.-References:...

.

A Development Commission was created by decree of Hipólito Yrigoyen

Hipólito Yrigoyen

Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Irigoyen Alem was twice President of Argentina . His activism became the prime impetus behind the obtainment of universal suffrage in Argentina in 1912...

 in 1928. In 1934 the town was turned into a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

, which was re-named General José de San Martín in 1955.

Communications

The region is crossed southwest to northwest by National Route 90, asphalted, that links it to Resistencia, and also by the Provincial Routes 3 and 7, which cross it from east to west and from east to southwest, respectively. The city has an airstrip of limited capacity.