Águas de São Pedro, São Paulo, Southeast Region, Brazil

History | Search for oil and the discovery of springs | Foundation and incorporation | Construction of the spa town and urban planning | Contemporary history | Geography | Geomorphology and hydrology | Ecology and environment | Economy | Media | Tourist Industry | Infrastructure

🇧🇷 Águas de São Pedro is a Brazilian municipality in the state of São Paulo located 184 km (114 miles) from the state capital. At only 3.61 square km (1.39 square miles), it is the second-smallest Brazilian municipality in terms of area. Águas de São Pedro means "Waters of Saint Peter". Its name is derived from the mineral springs in its territory and their location, which before the city's founding were part of the municipality of São Pedro (Saint Peter).

Most of the municipality's vegetation consists of reforested area. In 2016 there were 2,491 vehicles in the city. Exclusively an urban area, with no rural areas, the city had four health facilities in 2009. Its Human Development Index (HDI) is 0.854, the second highest in the state of São Paulo, as well as the second highest in Brazil, surpassed only by São Caetano do Sul.

Águas de São Pedro was incorporated in the 1940s. The city is known for its mineral waters of medicinal value, their natural sources popular tourist attractions. One of the springs, Fonte Juventude, has the second most highly sulfurous water in the world. It also has two large parks, Dr. Octavio Moura Andrade Park and the Parque das Águas "José Benedito Zani", and the municipal mini-garden, all important green areas of the city.

The municipality is located in the region of Itaqueri Ridge – Portuguese: Serra do Itaqueri; Itaqueri means "lying stone" in Tupí–Guaraní – in the south-central part of the state of São Paulo. It is a planned city and since its founding has been a tourist destination.

History Until 1800 the region of São Pedro and its enclave was virgin forest. The first known people to set foot in Águas de São Pedro territory were, as in most municipalities in the São Paulo countryside, bandeirantes seeking precious stones, especially gold, opening many roads and routes in the dense forest. One of these routes, called Caminho do Picadão (Way of the Forest Trail), started in Itu, passed through Piracicaba and advanced towards the hinterlands of Araraquara. For years, many farms were established in the region, until in 1883, São Pedro was detached from Piracicaba and became politically independent.

The economy at that time was based on coffee production, and many Italian families settled in these regions to work under partnership contracts to replace the slave labor. In this way, the Italian immigrant Angelo Franzin arrived in Brazil in 1887, going to work on a farm called "Recreio", owned by João Rezende da Cruz; just a year later Franzin would run other farms, like Santa Rita, Santa Eulália and Rosário. After many years of work, he purchased land with his brother Jácomo and decided to try coffee planting. The first properties they acquired were the farms Palmeiras and Limoeiro, followed by the lands of Floresta Escura, Gonçalves, Tuncum and Araquá, as well as houses, lots, and two machines to process coffee beans.

Search for oil and the discovery of springs In the 1920s Júlio Prestes, the governor of São Paulo, began exploration of the oil prospecting area in São Pedro. His efforts failed to find petroleum, and the equipment was abandoned, but still gushing out mineral water. Subsequently, other attempts were made to find oil at greater depths, and again no oil was found. One oil rig structure still remains; it is called the Torre de Petróleo Engenheiro Ângelo Balloni (Engineer Ângelo Balloni Oil Tower).

Years later, in 1934, Franzin, owner of some of the land in the area, built a simple bath house (currently known as the "Youth Fountain") in one of the springs where he bathed, the waters of which had a characteristic smell of sulfur. A year later, a group of townspeople bought a lot measuring 100,000 square metres (1,076,400 sq ft) around the original wood bath house, where they built a health resort. It was composed of twelve masonry bathtubs. In that same year, Octavio Moura Andrade decided to build a spa there, giving it the name of Caldas de São Pedro, and, along with his brother, Antonio Joaquim de Moura Andrade, established the company Águas Sulfídricas e Termais de São Pedro S.A. (Saint Peter Thermal and Sulphydric Waters S.A.).

For four years, the Institute for Technological Research (IPT) of the University of São Paulo conducted a series of studies of those waters. Generally, water from great depths has a high concentration of substances that may be harmful to human beings, and its pH may not be suitable for bathing. In 1940 the results were published in Bulletin 26 of the IPT. The waters were deemed good for bathing, and their medicinal properties were studied by Professor João de Aguiar Pupo, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of São Paulo.

Foundation and incorporation Recognizing the importance of the thermal springs in the region, the São Paulo State Government on 19 June 1940 founded the Estância Hidromineral e Climática de Águas de São Pedro (Hydromineral and Climatic Spa of Águas de São Pedro). Despite this, the city celebrates its birthday on 25 July, the date in 1940 of the founding of the first major building in the city, the Grande Hotel (now Grande Hotel São Pedro). The municipality of Águas de São Pedro was incorporated by State Law No. 233, of 24 December 1948.

Construction of the spa town and urban planning To promote the development and exploitation of the medicinal waters in an economically viable way, Octavio Moura Andrade conceived and designed a city focused on hydrotherapy and residential purposes: a spa town. Águas de São Pedro was created as a hydromineral spa, fully planned and aiming to serve both those who needed treatment and tourists looking for fun and leisure. The urban planner Jorge de Macedo Vieira was chosen to integrate the use of space with the mineral waters, topography, soil, and climate, conducting a two-year-long detailed study of the area prior to designing the city. It was only in 1940 that the project was completed, being recorded in the Real Estate Registry Office of the District of São Pedro under number 1, in accordance with the requirements of the Brazilian Federal Decree-Law No. 58, of 10 December 1937.

As part of this project several buildings were constructed, including a large luxury hotel to welcome tourists, as well as a casino, one of the first in the country with activity regulated by the government. A sanitation system was constructed, with the technical firm Saturnino de Brito from Rio de Janeiro hired to study and control the sanitation system in the area around the Grande Hotel. Several roads were reconstructed, including an 8-kilometre (5 mi) road connecting São Pedro to the springs that can handle the traffic of heavy vehicles; construction of an airport (now São Pedro Airport) in a 40-alqueire area (239.2 acres, or 96.8 ha) with four runways, a departure lounge, electricity, telephone, running water, hangar and refueling station. Energy infrastructure was improved. Because São Pedro's power grid was in disrepair, a private power line was built connecting São Pedro to the construction works of the spa, and in the Grande Hotel was installed an emergency powerhouse with two diesel generators capable of supplying the hotel and the town.

Contemporary history After the opening of the spa, tourism gained momentum. The city became one of the members of the Região Turística da Serra do Itaqueri (Touristic Region of the Itaqueri Ridge), composed of twelve municipalities. With the large influx of tourists, the need developed for improvements in the commercial sector, prompting renovation of the Rua do Comércio (Trade Street, old nickname for the street João Batista Azevedo).

In 2013 a group of companies led by Telefônica Vivo announced plans to make Águas de São Pedro the first digital city in the country. In the first stage of the project, the telephone wiring of the city was replaced, changing from copper to optical fiber. An antenna, providing 4G technology, and security cameras were installed; tablets were distributed to students of the municipal school; presence sensors in a smart car parking system and a smart street lighting system were installed, reducing energy consumption. At the end of 2015, though continuing to provide services to the community, Telefônica Vivo transferred managing responsibility to the city government. The second stage would begin in 2016, with the installation of interactive kiosks in public places, the training of teachers to work with new technologies, and the scheduling of medical appointments over the Internet, but ended up not being implemented. In addition, most of the residents went on to complain that most of the services promised no longer exist or do not work.

Geography The municipality of Águas de São Pedro covers 3.612 square km (1.4 sq mi), the second-smallest Brazilian city in area, only larger than Santa Cruz de Minas. It represents 0.0015% of the state territory and 0.0004% of the area of south-eastern Brazil. The municipality does not have a rural area, only an urban perimeter.

Águas de São Pedro is divided into four neighborhoods: Jardim Jerubiaçaba (Garden Jerubiaçaba; Jerubiaçaba means "loyalty" in Tupí–Guaraní) in the north-east, Jardim Iporanga (Garden Iporanga; Iporanga means "beautiful river" in Tupí–Guaraní) in the east, Centro (Center), and Jardim Porangaba (Garden Porangaba; Porangaba means "nice view" in Tupí–Guaraní) in the south.

The city is located at latitude 22°35'50.422" south and longitude 47°53'02.309" west, and at a distance of 184 km (114 mi) north-west of the São Paulo state capital. Its only adjacent municipality is São Pedro, from which is one of the four enclaves of Brazil, besides Arroio do Padre, Ladário and Portelândia.

Geomorphology and hydrology The geomorphology of the area of Águas de São Pedro is characterized by reliefs of low, soft hills – separated by valleys without major river plains – and it is slightly rugged, with sites that only rarely exceed 200 metres (656 ft) of unevenness. The municipality is at an altitude of 515 metres (1,690 ft) above sea level, and located in a geographic region called the São Paulo State Peripheral Depression, near the border with the Western Plateau, in an area of basaltic cuestas.

Águas de São Pedro is located in the so-called Piramboia Formation (Piramboia means "snake fish" in Tupí–Guaraní), one of the five stratigraphic subdivisions of the Paraná Basin, all formed at different periods, in which Triassic and Early Cretaceous ages sediments predominate. The sediments are composed of thin to medium arenites, white-orange to reddish in color, and with tangential cross-bedding in a mid-size to large base; these features are indicative of temporary rivers in the past in a semiarid environment.

The city is situated in the central part of the Medium Tietê Zone, which occupies about 15,000 square km (5,792 sq mi), or two-fifths of the total area of the Peripheral Depression. It is bounded by Araquá River (Araquá means "hole of the world" in Tupí–Guaraní), which has a general north–south route, and also by the Limoeiro and Das Palmeiras lakes. The region where Águas de São Pedro is located is also part of the watershed of the Piracicaba River. The Piracicaba basin extends over an area of 12,568.72 square km (4,853 sq mi), covering the south-eastern state of São Paulo and the southern end of Minas Gerais.

Ecology and environment The original vegetation in the area of Águas de São Pedro was the cerrado, a mixed formation classified into two strata: the upper stratum, composed of trees with variable height of from 3 to 6 metres (10 to 20 ft), with crowns often sparse and spaced apart, and the lower stratum, composed of continuous coverage of grasses and other plants less than a meter tall, and trees with trunks and twisted and gnarled branches, thick bark, large leaves, and thorns. This natural vegetation, however, is quite devastated. Today the vegetation is predominantly planted. The city has 69.58 hectares (172 acres), 17.40% of its total area, of reforested areas, mostly concentrated in Dr. Octavio Moura Andrade Park in the north-west, and 2.06 hectares (5 acres), or 0.69% of its total area, of floodplain vegetation, all concentrated on the banks of the Araquá River in the south-east portion of the municipality.

Economy According to data for 2016 from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the municipality had a gross domestic product (GDP) of R$132,616,560.00, of which R$7,533,360.00 were product taxes net of subsidies, and the GDP per capita was R$41,378.02. Also according to the IBGE, in 2016 the city had 225 local units (shops) and a total of 1,569 employed persons, with 1,271 of them salaried. Salaries along with other compensation totaled R$32,625,000.00 and the average monthly wage of the municipality was 2.2 minimum wages.

The city does not have a rural area, so the primary sector does not factor in the local GDP. Although the municipality does not depend on any major industry, the gross value added to the GDP from the secondary sector was R$10,504,940.00.

R$94,367,210.00 of the municipal GDP is from services, currently the major source of GDP of Águas de São Pedro. A major part of the tertiary sector is tourism, and the city's economy is geared exclusively toward this sector. The municipality of Águas de São Pedro is integrated with the Tourism Region of the Itaqueri Ridge and has as its main attraction its medicinal mineral waters. According to city officials, the new tourism routes go through regionalization. Tourists attracted by the natural attractions also help to stimulate the commercial sector of the city. The busiest retail centres are Carlos Mauro Avenue and Trade Street, which after renovations costing R$302,000.00 has become a pedestrian street.

According to the Brazilian Secretary of Foreign Trade (SECEX), in 2016 the exports of Águas de São Pedro totaled only US$838, all originated from Australia. Among the products exported are imitation jewelry, woven baskets and plastic lids.

The holidays also tend to bring more income to the city. In the 2016 Carnival, for example, the Municipal Secretary of Tourism said that the influx of tourists would result in the addition of R$5 million into the local economy. Several economic programs were created to highlight the Tourism Region, attract more tourists, and improve the commercial and lodging sectors.

Media Only one newspaper is published in the city, called Jornal Águas News, founded 21 May 2016 and have biweekly circulation. The city, however, is served by regional newspapers reporting events in the city, such as A Tribuna de São Pedro, and Jornal O Regional, from São Pedro, and Jornal de Piracicaba, A Tribuna Piracicabana, and Gazeta de Piracicaba, from Piracicaba.

Águas de São Pedro has only one radio station broadcasting from the city, Rádio FM Estância Ltda. (call sign ZYD 970), which began in 1987 and now is branded as 92 FM.

Tourist Industry On weekends the city receives an influx of tourists that numbers up to twice the number of year-round residents – about 6,000 tourists. On the long holidays, the number of tourists can reach 30,000.

Águas de São Pedro is one of eleven municipalities considered hydromineral spas by the government of the state of São Paulo, by fulfilling certain prerequisites set by state Law. Federal Law no. 2,661 from 3 December 1955 states: "It is considered thermomineral, hydromineral, or simply mineral spa the location recognised by state law, and which has springs of thermal or mineral, natural waters exploited in compliance with the provisions of this law and the Federal Decree-Law no. 7,841, from 8 August 1945". This recognition ensures these municipalities a larger budget from the state to invest in regional tourism. Also, the city has the right to add before its name the title of hydromineral spa, the term by which the city is to be designated by both the municipal administration as well as the state references.

As green areas the city has the Mini Horto (Mini Garden), a place with a plant nursery and a pond, and two large parks: • Dr. Octavio Moura Andrade Park (named in 1975), area with more than one million square meters (approximately 10,763,900 square feet), with 16 hiking trails with a length of 6,500 metres (21,300 ft). In the park can be found several species of the regional fauna and flora, as about 250 types of birds and approximately 40 coatis. • Parque das Águas "José Benedito Zani" (Waters Park "José Benedito Zani", named in 2000), an area with 6,400 square metres (68,900 sq ft) with a jogging track, an outdoor gym, a skate ramp, and a bikeway.

Águas de São Pedro had the Museu das Telecomunicações "Gilberto Affonso Penna" (Museum of Telecommunications "Gilberto Affonso Penna"), better known as Museu do Rádio (Radio Museum), which was inaugurated in 2003 and had a collection of 117 items, ranging from gramophones to radio transmitters and typewriters. After a renovation in the place where it was located, the Centro Educacional e Cultural Angelo Franzin (Angelo Franzin Educational and Cultural Center, also known by the acronym CECAF), the museum was closed and has no forecast of reopening.

There are two local holidays in Águas de São Pedro: the city anniversary (25 July) and the day of the Immaculate Conception (8 December).

Infrastructure The city of Águas de São Pedro had 990 residences in 2010. Of this total 654 were owned properties, with 610 owned and already paid for, 44 being paid for, and 266 rented; 69 properties were lent, with 38 lent by an employer and 31 lent by other means.

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Image: Adobe Stock Cifotart #141514779

Águas de São Pedro has a population of over 3,521 people. Águas de São Pedro also forms part of the wider Piracicaba District which has a population of over 1,537,819 people. Águas de São Pedro is situated near Piracicaba.

Twin Towns, Sister Cities Águas de São Pedro has links with:

🇧🇷 Cubatão, Brazil 🇪🇸 Molinaseca, Spain
Text Atribution: Wikipedia Text under CC-BY-SA license

Antipodal to Águas de São Pedro is: 132.133,22.6

Locations Near: Águas de São Pedro -47.8667,-22.6

🇧🇷 Piracicaba -47.633,-22.717 d: 27.2  

🇧🇷 Rio Claro -47.563,-22.412 d: 37.6  

🇧🇷 Limeira -47.4,-22.55 d: 48.2  

🇧🇷 Santa Bárbara d'Oeste -47.415,-22.754 d: 49.4  

🇧🇷 Araras -47.385,-22.358 d: 56.3  

🇧🇷 São Carlos -47.883,-22 d: 66.7  

🇧🇷 Sumaré -47.283,-22.8 d: 63.8  

🇧🇷 Leme -47.391,-22.186 d: 67.2  

🇧🇷 Botucatu -48.456,-22.891 d: 68.5  

🇧🇷 Cosmópolis -47.183,-22.633 d: 70.2  

Antipodal to: Águas de São Pedro 132.133,22.6

🇯🇵 Ginowan 127.78,26.279 d: 19413.9  

🇯🇵 Tomigusuku 127.667,26.15 d: 19414.8  

🇯🇵 Naha 127.702,26.199 d: 19413.9  

🇯🇵 Urasoe 127.734,26.254 d: 19412.3  

🇯🇵 Okinawa City 127.793,26.343 d: 19410.1  

🇯🇵 Makishi 127.667,26.2 d: 19411.2  

🇯🇵 Nago 127.978,26.592 d: 19404  

🇯🇵 Okinawa 127.809,26.409 d: 19406.3  

🇯🇵 Amami 129.483,28.367 d: 19320.9  

🇯🇵 Miyakojima 125.267,24.8 d: 19274.5  

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