An unusually young town, Alta Floresta, was founded in the 70’s of the 20th century, in the heart of Amazon jungle. In May 1976 the forest clade along the road was reclaimed, on which the town was supposed to be created. Its construction took only 4 years. The status of municipality was granted in 1979.
The decision of building a settlement was done by the company Aristo Riva. It was time of intensive use of rubber trees, and the area was full of them. There was also a huge potential for gold mine. The cheapest solution turned out to be establishing a colony in the heart of jungle. The name of the city was chosen in contest organized by radio station. With time, together with growing popularity in other municipalities, the ore lost on its value.
On the area of Alta Floresta there is campus of State University in Mato Grosso, established in 1992. Students can choose from studies in fields like biology, agronomy, forestry or law and journalism. There ae also operating several dozens of private and public primary schools and a few high schools.
The town has a few smaller and bigger furniture factories, that make use of wealth of forests. Coming from Alta Floresta furniture are very popular in the region. Apart from local shops they also make it to shopping malls in the whole Mato Grosso state. Owners of the furniture factories care about maintaining balance between cutting trees and planting new one. It is supposed to protect forests form disappearing.
Rainy, tropical climate is not an easy one for humans. There can be distinguished two seasons – rainy summers and dry winter. Temperatures during day are fluctuating, depending on month, from 20 to 38 Celsius degrees. On hottest days temperature reach even 40 Celsius degrees. In summertime rains can be intensive and causing local floods. It happens that from sky falls as much as more than 2750 mm of rain.
