Ponte Nova is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

in central-eastern

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 ...

state,

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Location

Ponte Nova is located a few kilometers south of the Doce River on a tributary called the Piranga. As of 2020, the population is estimated at 59,875 inhabitants and the area of the municipality is 470.6 km. The elevation is 402 meters above sea level. It has railroad connections to

Ouro Preto Ouro Preto (, ''Black Gold''), formerly Vila Rica (, ''Rich Village''), is a city in and former capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a former colonial mining town located in the Serra do Espinhaço mountains and designated a World Herit ...

and is linked by state highways to the capital of

Belo Horizonte Belo Horizonte (, ; ) is the sixth-largest city in Brazil, with a population around 2.7 million and with a metropolitan area of 6 million people. It is the 13th-largest city in South America and the 18th-largest in the Americas. The metropol ...

and to Ouro Preto. The beginnings of the city go back to 1755 when the first farms were established in the region. Agriculture and commerce were the occupations of the first inhabitants. The town saw the cycles of first sugar cane and then coffee. From 1770 to 1832, the town was officially denominated an Arraial and was called Capela Filial do Furquim. In 1862 it was raised to a Vila and Ponte Nova became the seat of a municipality in 1866. Distances to major cities: *

- (MG) 180 km *

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

- (SP) 781 km *

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

- (RJ) 420 km * Vitória - (ES) 392 km

Economy

The economy is based on

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

, limited industry and services. Ponte Nova produces

livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...

, both dairy and meat,

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with ...

, fruits and vegetables, and swine raising, this being quite developed with more than 350 establishments and 30,000 head. Until recently the city was the center of a prosperous sugar-cane growing area and there were several mills (engenhos in Portuguese). The first sugar cane mill in the state of Minas Gerais was installed in Ponte Nova in 1885. Most of these have now closed. The municipality included the Fazenda São Mateus Biological Reserve, created in 1974. An audit in 2012 stated that a number of biological reserves created in 1974 on state-owned land were being re-assessed, since they no longer qualified as conservation units. These were Fazenda São Mateus, Carmo da Mata, Colônia 31 de Março and others.

References

External links

* https://archive.today/20121127031402/http://www.pontenova.mg.gov.br/home/index/principal/default.asp {{Authority control Municipalities in Minas Gerais