São José do Rio Pardo is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. It was founded by Colonel Antônio Marçal Nogueira de Barros on April 4, 1865. Nevertheless, since the town's saint, São José or Saint Joseph was celebrated on March 19, the accepted official date of the town foundation is that of March. At first, São José do Rio Pardo was a dependency of the village of Caconde. In the late 1800s and the early 1900s the town received a mass of immigration from northern Italy, those immigrants went to town for working in the coffee fields in replacement of the slave workforce, since slaves were set free in 1888 by an act of Princess Isabel. The population in 2004 was 52,494 and the area is 420.19 km².