Qualla: São Simão, Goiás

São Simão, Goiás: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On a night in 1957, torrential rains tore the concrete bridge clean off the Paranaíba River, and cut São Simão in half. Sixty-eight years later, locals still call it Judgement Day. The bridge had been built in 1935 to link Goiás with Minas Gerais; its loss isolated the town for four years, until President Juscelino Kubitschek cut the ribbon on a replacement in 1961. Then, in 1975, they built something that changed the town for good: a dam 3,600 meters long and 127 meters tall that backed the Paranaíba up into a reservoir of 674 square kilometers - twice the size of Guanabara Bay.

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São Simão, Goiás: Before the Dam

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The town sits at the southwestern edge of Goiás, right where the state meets Minas Gerais. Before 1930, this stretch of the Paranaíba was almost empty - just diamond miners and fishermen in a small settlement on the riverbank. The 1935 bridge started a slow build. By the time the...

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São Simão, Goiás: Six Generators

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The São Simão hydroelectric plant began operating in 1978 with an installed capacity of 1,710 MW across six generators. The dam holds back a reservoir with a useful volume of approximately 5.5 billion cubic meters. ANEEL, Brazil's electricity regulator, authorizes the reservoir t...

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São Simão, Goiás: The Blue Lake

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Praia do Lago Azul - Blue Lake Beach - stretches a kilometer along the reservoir's edge, lined with bars, showers, a bike path, bathrooms, and tropical vegetation. The beach is entirely artificial - it did not exist before the dam - but nobody treats it as fake. Fishing, swimming...

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São Simão, Goiás: The Waterway South

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

São Simão is officially a port on the Paranaíba River and a key link on the Hidrovia Paranaíba-Tietê-Paraná - a continuous navigable waterway system that connects central Brazil to the Atlantic via the port of Santos. Barges carrying soybeans, grains, sand, gravel, and sugarcane ...

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São Simão, Goiás: A Small-Town Economy

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The numbers stay modest. Population in 2007 was 13,832, up from 11,374 in 1980 - roughly 2,450 new residents across 27 years. The cattle herd runs about 40,000 head. Rice and corn are the main field crops. There are 19 industrial establishments, 192 retail businesses, and one aut...

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São Simão, Goiás: Looking Down at the Lake

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From the air, the lake dominates everything. The reservoir's curving shoreline cuts through the flat cerrado countryside in a long irregular ribbon, with the dam itself forming a white-gray line 3.6 kilometers long at the southern end. The old town disappeared under water when th...

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