In 1914, at the height of the wool industry, the newspaper “The Magellan Times” was founded in Punta Arenas. The owner and editor was Charles Arthur Thomas Riesco, who was born in 1881 in Great Britain, son of a Chilean diplomat and a Scottish mother.

Riesco identified strongly with his native country, being an active member of the British Club of Punta Arenas. His newspaper became the longest running English language newspaper in the region.

“The Magellan Times” was aimed primarily at the upper-middle classes of the British colony. It was well received: by 1920, 1,000 copies were published weekly.

It was sold not only in Punta Arenas, but throughout the estancias of Southern Patagonia, from Tierra del Fuego (in the south) to the northern border of the province of Santa Cruz (Argentina). Riesco died in 1931, but the newspaper continued to be published until 1936.