History of Coronel Fabriciano

On this same occasion, a road was opened connecting Vila Rica (now Ouro Preto, then the capital of the Province of Minas Gerais) to Cuieté, to transport the gold extracted in the region of the current municipality of Conselheiro Pena, whose metal would run out after 1780.

On the same occasion, José Assis de Vasconcelos, originally from Santana do Alfié, in São Domingos do Prata,[5] took possession of land near the current industrial core of Usiminas.

[8][9] Coming from Leopoldina, on September 11, 1831, Francisco de Paula e Silva settled with his family and numerous slaves after receiving three sesmarias[note 1] from Emperor Pedro II: Alegre, Limoeiro, and Timóteo.

[11] João Teixeira arrived in the village newly married to Guilhermina Ribeiro da Silva, both from Ferros, attracted by the projects of the lease of the Vitória-Minas Railway (EFVM).

[12] Due to the distance traveled by the then clerk José Zacarias da Silva Roque to the railroad terminal, the Melo Viana notary's office was transferred to Calado in 1933, changing the district headquarters to the region of the current city center.

[15] In February 1936, an office of the Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira (now ArcelorMittal Aços Longos) was set up in Calado, seeking to centralize the exploration of wood and the production of charcoal from the Doce River Valley to feed the furnaces of its plants in João Monlevade.

[15] The company, through the local superintendent, engineer Joaquim Gomes da Silveira Neto, was responsible for a great impulse to the city as an organized urban center since several streets and avenues were created and buildings erected, in particular the first masonry houses.

[15][24] Besides the shipments of wood and coal and the unloading of machinery destined for Belgo's industrial enterprise, the movement of the Calado Station was restricted to the arrival of smaller orders and foodstuffs.

The lumber sector became the main economic source throughout the 1930s, also benefiting internal commercial activity, which later began to attract consumers from neighboring towns through the four daily train stops.

[10] Its name is a tribute to Fabriciano Felisberto Carvalho de Brito, who was one of the most influential politicians of Antônio Dias, having received from the Emperor of Brazil Pedro II, on August 25, 1888, the title of Lieutenant-Colonel of the National Guard for the District of Piracicaba.

[30] There was also the beginning of the regular practice of Catholic religious manifestations of the Ash Wednesday mass (1939), Coronation of Mary (1939), theater of the Passion of Jesus, and Holy Week processions (1946)[31] as well as the assembly of the Corpus Christi carpets (1946).

[19] At Tancredo Neves' suggestion, Father Deolindo Coelho provided the baptism records to be added to the number of inhabitants obtained by the census precariously carried out by the government of Antônio Dias, thus exceeding the minimum of 10 thousand residents, and a new emancipation proposal was sent to the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais (ALMG) on February 25, 1948.

That same year saw the arrival of the first branch of a large department store, Pernambucanas,[27] and the inauguration of Serraria Santa Helena on June 28, an enterprise that existed until the 1960s and also contributed to the structural and demographic development of the central Fabriciano region.

1039 of December 12, 1953, the district of Ipatinga was created,[2] whose development was primarily due to the Belgo-Mineira and Acesita charcoal works and the building of the Salto Grande Hydroelectric Plant, located in the municipality of Braúnas.

[1][36] Despite the dismemberment, most workers of the steel companies continued to live in Coronel Fabriciano, while tax revenues and most of the social actions promoted by the industries were destined only to neighboring cities, which hosted them.

[61] On June 20, 2013, about 3,000 people walked the entire Avenida Magalhães Pinto to the city center, extending to the Caladinho neighborhood region, as part of the protests in Brazil that year.

[74] The effervescence of commerce in the central region culminated, as of the 1990s, in the exhaustion of lots and properties for sale and the subsequent overvaluation of real estate in surrounding neighborhoods, such as Santa Helena, Professores and Todos os Santos.

[77] At the beginning of the 21st century, the discovery of precious and semi-precious stones, such as aquamarine, tourmaline, quartz, topaz, garnet, and graphite, made it possible to start and legalize mineral extraction in the municipality.

[1] Between the late 1960s and early 1970s, the occupation of the so-called Morro do Carmo was observed, after the distribution of lots to the population without assessments or technical criteria by the mayor Rufino da Silva Neto, leading to the formation of irregular housing and living conditions in the city.

[84] In the rainy season, due to intense precipitation, landslides on the hills and floods on the banks of the water courses became common in areas such as Prainha, in the Center of Fabriciano, and in lower parts of the Mangueiras and Manoel Domingos neighborhoods.

[96][97] Among the periodicals, besides the newspaper O Progresso (1948), which was the first to be created in the then district of Coronel Fabriciano and collaborated with the fomentation of political force,[35] there were also O Programa (1954), A Verdade Impressa (1962), O Ipatinga (1963), O Vale do Aço (1967), Diário da Manhã (1969) and O Popular (1973).

[102] In the early 1960s, the former district clerk, José Zacarias Roque, promoted the creation of a cemetery on the banks of the Piracicaba River, but the project was disapproved by the mayor Raimundo Alves de Carvalho due to the proximity to the old bohemian area.

[118] However, contrary to the guidelines prepared by the municipal government to allow commercial activity to continue and the recommendations for social distancing made by health organizations,[119] crowds and disrespect for the instructions were recorded by part of the population.

[43] According to data from Rotary International, present in the city since 1959, at that time about 57% of the population was illiterate and 43% couldn't read and write, a situation that began to be reversed with the building of new schools in partnership with the state, starting in the 1960s.

Its activities extended to other sectors of society, such as teaching catechism to children in support of the Saint Sebastian Parish, and social assistance to the residents of Morro do Carmo, where they developed courses in manual labor, cooking, and sewing.

[7] The campus of Unileste in Coronel Fabriciano is also home to landmarks such as the Fazendinha, which initially functioned as a guest house and was planned as a replica of the farm that existed prior to the construction of the university center; the João Paulo II Theater, built in 1978 on the first floor of the Padre de Man College, on the university campus;[101] the Dom Serafim Cardeal Fernandes Araújo Library (Central Library), which has one of the largest bibliographic collections in the region;[129] and the Father Joseph Cornélius Marie de Man Museum, which was established in 1993 and contributes to the preservation of local and institutional history.

[102] At the end of the 1960s, the Diocese of Itabira, together with the Catholic congregation of the Padres do Trabalho, helped in the creation of the University of Labor (UT), now Unileste,[133] and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul was responsible for building houses for the victims of the 1979 floods in the current Frederico Ozanan neighborhood.

[140] Since the 1950s[28] and more markedly between the 1980s and 1990s, however, the Catholic Church shares space with other religious faiths,[137] ranging from the most varied Protestant Christian denominations to esoteric and indigenous practices, in addition to the presence of those without religion.

[144] The Casa de Cultura do Vale do Aço, created in 1978, was one of the main stages for scenic and theatrical performances and workshops in the region, and the space was later occupied by the São Lucas Hospital in the Santa Terezinha II neighborhood.

[156] Another important occurrence in sports was the passing of the torch relay of the Summer Olympic Games on May 12, 2016, traveling through streets in the central region between the Terra Mãe Monument and the Estação Square.