Until the 17th century, the region was inhabited by the Irará was settled by the Paiaiá, a subgroup of the Quiriris peoples.

Bandeirantes entered the city to both hunt for precious stones in the Serra de Irará and to enslave indigenous people.

Two structures remain from the bandeirantes, a church in the Vila de Bento Simões and a chapel in Caroba.

In mid-1717, the first explorations of the lands in the center of the current municipality were registered, where Antônio Homem da Fonseca Correia was an early permanent Portuguese settler to the area.

The farmhouse of the family gave rise to the village of Irará, which was also a site of a Paiaiá settlement.