It was discovered on 2 March 1981, by American astronomer Schelte Bus at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.
[2] Los Molinos is a non-family asteroid from the main belt's background population.
[3] In August 2010, a rotational lightcurve of Los Molinos was obtained from photometric observations in the R-band by astronomers at the Palomar Transient Factory in California.
Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 267.906±1.9703 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.33 magnitude (U=2).
[3] This minor planet was named after the Los Molinos Observatory (844) located near Montevideo in Uruguay.