In 1857, the village of Vassouras was transformed into a city and seat of the municipality that administered the current lands of Miguel Pereira. The development of the region was only in the coffee farms, with practically no urban development. It was only after the construction of the Capela do Santo Antônio in 1898 that the settlers of Estiva began to build their humble houses and form an incipient commerce in an urban nucleus, thus encouraging the arrival of new residents to the place. Despite suffering economic decline due to the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the depletion of land due to inadequate exploitation of coffee plantations, urban development was boosted at the beginning of the 20th century, when the line of Estrada de Ferro Melhoramentos (incorporated to the Central do Brasil Railroad in 1903), which, starting from Japeri, in the Baixada Fluminense, reached the Paraíba do Sul River in the city of Paraíba do Sul. The railway axis stimulated the birth of settlements that, for the most part, housed the railroad workers themselves. This is the case of Governador Portela, where part of the urban areas was owned by the Federal Railroad Network (RFFSA), which built an entire residential village for railway workers. This feature is responsible for the development of the district headquarters that would take place before Estiva, currently Miguel Pereira. The urbanization of the areas adjacent to the Estiva station would take place in the 1930s, when the qualities of the region's climate were propagated by the doctor and professor Miguel Pereira, who would later give the city its name. Since then, urban occupation would have, as its main vector, summer tourism, which attracted and still attracts the population of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro. The original access by rail would be accompanied in the 1950s by a highway, whose subsequent paving represented a great stimulus to the urban and tourist development of the area. According to the administrative division of 1943, the municipality of Vassouras was formed by eleven districts, including those of Miguel Pereira, Governador Portela and Conrado. In 1955, the first two districts were dismembered from Vassouras, in order to form the municipality of Miguel Pereira, which thus achieved emancipation, under Law nº 2 626, of October 25 of that year, and was installed on 26 July 1956. In 1988, Conrado was also attached to Miguel Pereira. Geography According to