Casa Nova

History

The city was founded in 1879 along the historical alignment of the São Francisco River. Part of its early development was focused on the discovery and commercialization of salt in the nineteenth century. Workers scraped salt-bearing earth from patches of dry, clay-rich alluvial ground and leached it in troughs of water to produce brine which was dried to recover the salt. Salt was traded across the region using river boats as a primary transportation mode. The 1930s brought the Pau de Colher movement to the region which led to the 1938 Pau De Colher Massacre in the northwest boundary area of the Casa Nova municipality with the Brazilian state of Piaui. In the 1970s, construction of the Sobradinho dam and hydroelectric project down river from Casa Nova resulted in the original city (now referred to as “Casa Nova Velha” in Portuguese or “Old Casa Nova” in English) to be flooded along with four other towns and cities as the Sobradinho Reservoir filled. The city and its population were relocated in 1976 and 1977 to higher ground north of the original location along the BR-235 roadway connecting points across northeast Brazil. In the years since, various academicians have studied the socioeconomic challenges that were created by the forced relocations to develop lessons-learned to reduce the likelihood of adverse issues should similar hydroelectric dam development occur in other regions.

Geography

Casa Nova is located on the banks of the São Francisco River in the Middle São Francisco region that spans from the city of Pirapora in the state of Minas Gerais to the Paulo Afonso Hydroelectric Complex in the state of Bahia. Casa Nova lies within the Caatinga, a semiarid Brazilian biome characterized by seasonally dry woodland and thorny scrub, including drought-adapted trees, shrubs, cacti and bromeliads. The total area of the municipality is 9,648.94 square kilometers, making it one of the largest municipal territories in the state of Bahia.

Most-observed species

• Black Vulture

  Coragyps atratus (Bechstein, 1793) · Aves
  9
• Red-cowled Cardinal

  Paroaria dominicana (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  8
• Tropical Gnatcatcher

  Polioptila plumbea (Gmelin, 1788) · Aves
  7
• Picui Ground-Dove

  Columbina picui (Temminck, 1813) · Aves
  7
• Chalk-browed Mockingbird

  Mimus saturninus (Lichtenstein, 1823) · Aves
  7
• cactus conure

  Aratinga cactorum (Kuhl, 1820) · Aves
  6
• Wattled Jacana

  Jacana jacana (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  6
• Caatinga Cacholote

  Pseudoseisura cristata (Spix, 1824) · Aves
  6