Cataguas

The plateau around Caldas lies in the hills of southern Minas Gerais. As the gold workings of the captaincy declined, settlers moved into this upland country and established farms and cattle estates. A settlement emerged toward the end of the eighteenth century, and in 1813 the parish of Rio Verde das Caldas was created. Its landscape of hills and watercourses gave the community a setting distinct from the older mining towns.