The town was first established by Agustín Eguren as Edén Argentino ("Argentine Eden"), a bedroom community, in 1873. Its population remained in the few hundreds until, in 1890, the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway inaugurated a rail yard in the adjoining Villa Galíndez, to the east; La Fraternidad, one of Argentina's first and oldest trade unions, was founded by workers at the site in 1887. Further such installations opened by Eliseo Ramírez and the Ramírez de Lafuente family in 1901 made the area a prime rail operations hub, and the Great Southern inaugurated its first communter station there in 1902.