Port Howard (Spanish/Argentine name: Puerto Mitre; sometimes Puerto Howard in Spanish) is the largest settlement on West Falkland (unless Fox Bay is taken as one settlement, instead of two). It is in the east of the island, on an inlet of Falkland Sound. It is on the lower slopes of Mount Maria (part of the Hornby Mountains range).
Port Howard is the centre of a 810-square-kilometre (200,000-acre) sheep farm, with twenty permanent residents and over 40,000 sheep. Sometimes this population is doubled by transitory residents.
The settlement has two airstrips which receive regular flights from Stanley, and it is also the West Terminal of the new East-West Ferry. Over the past 15 years the Falkland Islands Government has built a network of all weather roads around East and West Falkland, Port Howard is at the Northern end of the West Falkland network. Attractions in the settlement include a ford, and large sheep shearing sheds. Many of the houses have attractive green roofs, and there are also a number of hedges about.
Every three years, Port Howard hosts the West Falklands Sports. This week-long celebration of the end of the shearing season combines serious horse-racing with other festivities.
The Warrah River and Chartres River are nearby fishing rivers.
Read more about Port Howard: History
Famous quotes containing the words port and/or howard:
“How happy is the sailor’s life,
From coast to coast to roam;
In every port he finds a wife,
In every land a home.”
—Isaac Bickerstaffe (c. 1735–1812)
“I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it should be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it in every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America is known to everyone who has given the matter attention.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)