Corumba

This stretch of the Corumbá River lies on the high plateau of central Goiás, in cerrado country of open grassland, scattered woodland and gallery forest along the streams. The Corumbá rises in the Pireneus hills near Pirenópolis, runs south through the plateau and finally joins the Paranaíba, one of the main headwaters of the Paraná. Its tributaries, such as the São Bartolomeu and the Descoberto, drain the same uplands, and the river gave its name to the settlements and trails of the region.

Before European arrival these uplands were hunting and gathering ground for Indigenous peoples of the Central Plateau. The expeditions of the bandeirantes in the early eighteenth century, among them those of Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva, found gold in Goiás, and mining camps spread along the rivers of the plateau. The Captaincy of Goiás was created in 1744, and the Corumbá valley became a line of passage between the mines, the cattle ranches that supplied them, and the roads toward Minas Gerais and São Paulo. Gold soon declined, and ranching on the open grasslands became the lasting livelihood of the valley.