The first seed of of the village of Guaraqueçaba was spread with the finalization of
the chapel of Bom Jesus dos Perdões at the feet of the Quitumbê hill.
Behind the chapel leads a
small trail to the top of the hill from where there is a fantastic view over the Guaraqueçaba bay.
Many personalities from Brazil and abroad visited or lived in the Guaraqueçaba region
and were seduced by the exhuberancy of its nature and local
ecosystems.
Aside from the famous traveler Hans Staden, there was the painter and linguist Julius Platzmann
who lived between 1858 and 1864 on the Pinheiro island and when returning to his native land,
revised his work about the grammar and language of the local Indians publishing personally
a Tupí - German dictionary.
Guaraqueçaba had its golden years from the mid of last and the beginning of this century.
Its economy was based on the production of banana and rice such as fishing and the
exploitation of noble woods.
It presented many characteristics of large cities, in that time:
two journals, “O Paraná” (1900) and “A Reaçao” (1917), a shooting club, miss election,
literature and music club and telegraph.
Guaraqueçaba´s development was very slow. The electricity, for instance, only in 1980 came to
town. Until than, the light was provided by generators solely until 10 a clock
at night. Thanks to Copel, the state owned company of electric energy, today the majority
of the local communities on the islands have access to solar energy. Unfortunately the maintenance
of the solar facilities became difficult due to the lack of appropriate spare parts.
One of the principal attempts to recover the region´s economy was the construction of the
Antonina - Guaraqueçaba road (rodovia estadual PR - 404), beginning of 1951, with the intention
to be part of the BR - 101, a coastal "super highway" between
São Paulo and Curitiba. It took
21 year to inaugurate the 100 km long road from which until today only 20 km are paved and
the remaining 80 km are a simple earth trail. Thanks to the activities of ecological
organizations, the continuation of this road until the State of São Paulo has never been finished.
