Curiosities

Historical Timeline of  Lençóis:

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-Lençóis was inhabited in 1845;

-As early as 1847 the first mining companies formed and trade relations began between Lençóis  and Paris, London and Amsterdam;

-1860 began the building of colonial houses in Lençóis;

-Lord of the Steps was adopted as the patron saint of miners;

-Immaculate Conception was adopted as the patroness of the city of Lençóis;

-In 1866 the city went through a wave of decadence because of the dispute within the diamond market in Africa, which normally was much more abundant and promising;

-In 1883 the miners discovered carbonate, a mineral essential in the construction of many machines used in the industrial revolution;

-In 1885 miners discovered the world’s largest carbonate sheets;

-In 1898 Lençóis was presented with the formation of the Philharmonic of Lençóis;

-In 1918 the prestige of Lençóis was such that it had a cinema called Cinema City Market in Brazil. After years of operating this Cinema was closed and then reopened under the name Rex Cinema in 1938;

-The famous and fearless Colonel Horácio de Matos came to Lençóis in 1920 and became one of the most respected men in Bahia politics;

-Coronel Horácio de Matos was responsible for disarming the people of the backcountry and mitigating the battles between gunmen, which occurred incessantly;

-In 1931 Colonel Horácio de Matos was arrested and murdered, meaning the end of his movement;

-Lençóis has had two newspapers of general importance to the region.  Diamantino founded in 1899 and The Backwoods in 1921;

-Horácio de Matos was one of the persecutors of the Prestes band, the band of men that killed one of his relatives. This historical chase was finished in Bolivia, after the Colonel and his men successfully chased the band out of Brazil;

-Electricity arrived in Lençóis only in 1971;

-The Colonial houses of Lençóis were listed as national historic and artistic monuments in 1973 and thereafter the city became included in sightseeing tours of the northeast.

-In 1977, during some of the cities hardest times, the first television arrived in the city of Lençóis and was installed at the Municipal Market;

-The arrival of television in the city was marked by the release of the film  “Rough Diamond”, directed by a son of Lençóis, Orlando Senna. This was a great event in the city, since many city residents were part of the cast and extras, and the film deals with the transition from mining to the first steps of tourism in the city;

-In 1980 the first hotel in Lençóis opened, and also the first highly destructive dredge mining was used;

-In 1987 the first bus station Lençóis was inaugurated;

-In 1996 the mecanical mining  was finally closed;

-In 1998 the Lençóis airport was inaugurated;

-The first Festival of Lençóis took place in 1999;

-In 2002 the Ministry of Culture funded the restoration of much of the colonial houses in the historic center of Lençóis.

 

Curiosities

-Hundreds of cave paintings show that the region was inhabited thousands of years ago by indigenous peoples. The colonial invasion and slavery, along with the discovery of gold in the early eighteenth century, deciminated the Indian tribes;

-The first settlers to populate the region came from the mines of Minas Gerais and were experienced diamond miners;

-The first diamonds were found in Lençóis in the vicinity of the Serrano pools, located just a twenty minutes walk from the Pousada Vila Serrano;

-The ecology  of the Chapada Diamantina is very diverse, combining remnants of Atlantic Rainforest, huge areas of savannah and scrub, and wetlands;

-The area of the Chapada Diamantina is larger than countries such as Holland and Belgium;

-The Chapada Diamantina National Park was created in 1985, by an American-born  naturalized Brazilian named Roy Funch.   Arriving in the region in the late 70’s, Funch saw the importance of creating the park and began the movement that lead to the creation of a park to protect the natural wonders of the now park;

-Scientific evidence proves that the Chapada Diamantina began to form 1.6 billion years. During this period, the plateau was covered by sea for 900 million years;

-The region gained recognition in international economics at the end of the nineteenth century due to the amount of diamonds that were here;

-It was the creation of the National Park and the beauty of the historic towns that began to attract tourism in the late 1970s and early ’80s;

-The Rua da Baderna in Lençóis is so named because it was the scene of many battles between gunmen and colonels;

-Rua das Pedras was where the diamond miners traded the diamonds and stones, and  where they often spent their money on women and drink;

-When they are seen from afar, the shade huts set up by the miners on the river bank, looked liked sheets spread out, hence the city name of Lençóis (Sheets);

-The Jarê is a unique religious manifestation of the Chapada Diamantina. It is a fusion of elements from the beliefs of the miners and the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé.