Pikumche

Linares lies in the central valley of Chile, south of the Maule River and west of the Andes. Indigenous Picunche communities inhabited the wider region before Spanish settlement. In 1794 Governor Ambrosio O’Higgins ordered the foundation of a villa at Pilocoyán, following petitions by local residents. Its plots were laid out later that year and the new town was named Linares. The settlement served the dispersed rural population of the surrounding valleys.