Fogo

Fogo, the island of fire, rises steeply from the Atlantic to the summit of Pico do Fogo, the highest mountain in Cape Verde. Its active volcano gives the island its name and dominates a landscape vulnerable both to eruptions and to the failure of the rains. Its summit reaches more than 2,800 meters above the sea.

Portuguese settlers arrived between 1470 and 1490, making Fogo one of the first inhabited islands of the archipelago. The town of São Filipe grew on its western side. In 1680 a violent eruption spread ash across much of the island, and many inhabitants fled to neighboring Brava. The volcano erupted again in 1725. Fogo's people also faced recurring drought and famine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when insufficient summer rain threatened their harvests.