River · Brazil
Tapajós
The Tapajós is a big river in the rainforest of Brazil. It forms where the Juruena and Teles Pires rivers meet, flows north through the state of Pará and joins the Amazon near the city of Santarém.
Picture credit: Mélété (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Tapajós?
The river starts here: Confluence of the Juruena and Teles Pires rivers, Brazil.
It ends in the Amazon near Santarém, Pará.
Countries on the river: Brazil.
The story behind it
The Tapajós was long famous for its clear, blue-green water, very different from the milky Amazon. Near Santarém the two rivers flow side by side for many kilometres without mixing, and people call this the ‘meeting of the waters’. In the dry months from August to December, white sand beaches appear along the shore, for example at the village of Alter do Chão, which is nicknamed the ‘Caribbean of Brazil’. Upstream, rapids stop large ships, but small boats can travel the whole river. About 325 kinds of fish are known from the Tapajós basin, and the Munduruku people live in the valley. In 1928 the car maker Henry Ford built a whole town called Fordlândia on the bank to grow rubber for tyres, but the plan failed. Today illegal gold mining makes parts of the river muddy, and that worries many people.
Questions children ask
How long is the Tapajós?
The Tapajós is about 840 km long, but the length varies with the measurement: some sources give only about 650 km. If you add its source river, the Juruena, the river measures about 2 080 km.
What is the meeting of the waters at Santarém?
Near Santarém the deep-blue, slightly warmer water of the Tapajós meets the milky water of the Amazon, which carries mud from the Andes. The two rivers flow side by side for many kilometres before they mix.
What was Fordlândia?
Fordlândia was a town that Henry Ford built on the Tapajós in 1928 to grow rubber for car tyres. The rubber trees fell ill, the town was given up in 1934, and not one drop of its rubber ever reached a Ford car.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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