Tubarão

About Tubarão

The river came first in Tubarão: its Tupi name, Tubá-Nharô, is usually translated as fierce father, and the town grew from the river ports of Poço Fundo and Poço Grande on the old route between the highlands of Lages and the coast at Laguna. Settlement took hold after 1774, and Tubarão separated from Laguna in 1870. Today it is a city of about 105,000 people in southern Santa Catarina.

The Dona Thereza Christina railway, completed in 1884 to carry coal from the mines to the port of Imbituba, shaped the town's growth and once had its headquarters here. Its legacy lives on in a railway museum full of historic locomotives. In 1974 a catastrophic flood of the Tubarão River killed about 199 people and displaced most of the population, an event still remembered in local archives and memorials.

Tubarão is a busy commercial centre known for ceramics, with hot-spring hotels and rural areas such as Rio do Pouso nearby. The beaches of Laguna and the climb up the Serra do Rio do Rastro are within easy driving distance.