Honório Bicalho is a community in the state of

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...

, Brazil, in the municipality of

Nova Lima Nova Lima is a municipality of about 87,000 people, whose downtown is located about 20 kilometers south of Belo Horizonte, the capital of the south-eastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Mining is one of the main economical activities of the ...

. The

Rio das Velhas The das Velhas River ( pt, Rio das Velhas), is by length the major tributary of the basin of the São Francisco river. Its water flows into that river at a place called Barra do Guaicuí, in the municipality of Várzea da Palma, Minas Gerais. The ...

runs through the community from south to north.

Railway

The

Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil The Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil was one of the principal railways of Brazil, uniting the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Minas Gerais. Origins On 9 February 1855, The imperial government of Brazil signed a contract with Edwar ...

was the first railway line to be built by the emperor Pedro II of Brazil, and was a backbone of the Brazilian railway system. The first stretch was opened in 1858. The Honório Bicalho station was opened in 1890, named after the engineer Honório Bicalho, who was involved in various public works on ports and railways. The station has been abandoned, although the tracks remain. The station was demolished in the late 1990s.

Mining operations

The

Saint John d'El Rey Mining Company The Saint John d'El Rey Mining Company was a British mining company that operated in Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries. The company employed skilled miners from Cornwall and elsewhere in Britain in its gold mines in the state of Minas Gerais, ...

operated the Gaia, Faria and Gabirobas gold mines southwest of Honório Bicalho and the Bicalho mine at Honório Bicalho. The company bought the Fernan Paes estate to the west of Honorio Bicalho around 1863 and worked the Gaia and Gabirobas mines between 1867 and 1873, after which mining halted. The company drove an exploration

adit An adit (from Latin ''aditus'', entrance) is an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal, by which the mine can be entered, drained of water, ventilated, and minerals extracted at the lowest convenient level. Adit ...

in the Bicalho mine in 1925. In 1936 the mine was pumped out and exploration continued to a depth of . The company started to drive an adit known locally as the Gaia tunnel from the west side of the Rio das Velhas at Honorio Bicalho in 1934, running in a west-southwest direction. It was meant to drain water from the old Gaia mine and provide access to deeper levels of that mine. In 1935 the adit was extended further to the west-southwest, and reached the foot of the Faria mine in 1936.

Notes

Sources

* * {{authority control Populated places in Minas Gerais