Template:Wp-Ribeirão Preto-History

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The municipality was founded June 19, 1856, being populated initially by farmers and African slaves coming from other areas of São Paulo (especially from Mogi Mirim and São Simão) and Minas Gerais looking for land with good pastures. The city was built by a stream called Black Creek, and was named after it (Ribeirão Preto means black creek in Portuguese, sometimes translated as "Black Stream"). The fertile soil of Ribeirão Preto region allowed a high crop productivity.

Initially the main rural activities were pastures, cattle and subsistence agriculture. In the 1870s, the coffee crop arrived to Ribeirão Preto. The rapid development of coffee cultivation brought wealth and progress to the city, which by the 1880s had become the largest coffee producer in the world. Coffee, also called "green gold," caused a "gold rush" in the region, which attracted workers and adventurous people from many parts of the world. This movement was helped by the new Mogiana Railway, linking Ribeirão Preto to São Paulo and to the port city of Santos, and by the abolition of slavery in Brazil, in 1888. The end of slavery created a strong market for labor, and "coffee barons", as coffee farmers were called, also stimulated immigration. Immigrants coming from Europe (mostly Italy, but also from Portugal, Spain and Germany) and from Japan have settled in coffee farms of Ribeirão Preto and neighboring towns. Some of the immigrants, especially the Italians, were settled at the "Núcleo Colonial Antonio Prado" (Antonio Prado Colonial Nucleus) which was created by the government in 1897. This nucleus originated many of the northern and eastern districts of Ribeirão Preto. Later, after the stock market crash of 1929, some of the immigrants bought the farms from their impoverished former employers.