Serra dos Órgãos as seen from Teresópolis, 1885. Oil on canvas by Georg Grimm

The Serra dos Órgãos National Park was created on 30 November 1939 as the third national park in Brazil.[1][a] The purpose of the park was to protect the headwaters of the rivers that flow into the Fluminense basin, and to protect the spectacular mountains. The park was created by the government of Getúlio Vargas by decree law 1822 of 30 November 1939 with an area of about 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres). It covered parts of the municipalities of Magé, Petrópolis and Teresópolis.[1]

Various buildings and other infrastructure were built in the 1940s such as the natural swimming pool, administrative buildings, warehouses, garage, staff quarters and four shelters on the Trilha do Sino (Bell Trail). The park had about 250 employees, including waiters in the mountain shelters. In the 1960s, with the national capital transferred from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia, the park lost funding and the facilities were allowed to deteriorate. The shelters and some of the staff homes were lost.[1]

Efforts were made to restore the park from 1980, including publication of the management plan and purchase of land to regularize the park's tenure. Decree 90023 of 2 August 1984 delimited the area of the park as 10,527 hectares (26,010 acres). In the 1990s the municipality of Guapimirim was split off from Magé, and also contains the biggest part of the park. From the 1990s the old buildings have been restored and new ones built.[1] The park was included in the Central Rio de Janeiro Atlantic Forest Mosaic, created in 2006.[2]

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