Serra Pelada (English: "Bald Ridge") is a Brazilian village and district of the Municipality of Curionópolis, in the southeast of Pará State. A former boomtown, it is best known for its open-pit mine, which operated from 1980 until the early 90s and is now a polluted lake.

Serra Pelada lies 430 kilometres (270 mi) south of the mouth of the Amazon River, and was rainforest until its initial settlement in the late 1970s. Its mine was made infamous by the still images taken by Alfredo Jaar and later by Sebastião Salgado and the first section of Godfrey Reggio's 1988 documentary Powaqqatsi, showing an anthill of workers moving vast amounts of ore by hand. Because of the chaotic nature of the operation estimating the number of miners was difficult, but at least 100,000 people were thought to be present, making it one of the largest mines in the world. Today the Serra Pelada mine is abandoned and the giant open pit that was created by hand has filled with water, creating a small polluted lake. However, mining operations in the area, particularly for hematite, have continued.

The precise administrative status of Serra Pelada, a village of about 6,000 inhabitants, is unclear. As early as 1996, Serra Pelada was referred to as a district in its own right by the Chamber of Deputies. Documents of the city of Curionópolis and state of Pará have also referred to Serra Pelada as a district. However, Curionópolis City Council, the only body with jurisdiction, has never produced official legislation establishing Serra Pelada as a district.

Prior to settlement in the late 70s, the area was covered in rainforest. The history of Serra Pelada is defined by artisanal mining. Rural settlement started in 1978, shortly prior to the discovery of gold. While the first settlers were not miners by trade, their settlement was sponsored by a scheme of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the "Garimpo Project", which aimed to expand Brazil's production of gemstones and precious metals.

According to legend, the first alluvial gold at the Serra Pelada site was found in December 1979 by a vaqueiro in the Grota Rica stream, on the Três Barras Farm owned by Genésio Ferreira da Silva. In January 1980, Silva hired a geologist to investigate whether gold he found on his property was part of a larger deposit. A local child swimming on the banks of a local river found a 6-gram (0.21 oz) nugget of gold. Soon word leaked out that Genésio Silva was indeed sitting upon one of the largest deposits in the world. By the end of the week a gold rush had started with thousands of people descending upon the farm to mine. Five weeks later, there were 10,000 on Silva's property and another 12,000 nearby. Huge nuggets were quickly discovered, the biggest weighing nearly 6.8 kilograms (15 lb) and worth $108,000 in 1980 ($422,011 in 2025). By March, the prospectors (garimpeiros) had formed a village, named Serra Pelada after the "bald mountain" where gold was mined after the Grota Rica stream was exhausted.

At first the only way to get to the remote site was by plane or foot. Garimpeiros would often pay exorbitant prices to have taxis drive them from the nearest town to the end of a dirt track; from there, they would walk the remaining distance—some 15 kilometres (9 mi)—to the site. The growing town, since it could only be made of material that was carried in by hand, was a collection of haphazard shacks and tents. Each prospector had a 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) by 3 metres (9.8 ft) claim. By May 1980 there were 4,000 such claims. The mine was an open pit, and hand-mined by prospectors. While most would never see great wealth from their labors, some poor prospectors became millionaires overnight. Genésio Ferreira da Silva made a fortune from requiring 10% of all revenue produced by the prospectors until the arrival of the government.

The arrival of the prospectors spurred a government response. In March, Rio Doce Geology and Mining (DOCEGEO), a subsidiary of the state-owned Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, established itself as the monopoly buyer of gold mined on the site, and took responsibility for maintaining mine infrastructure in 1980. In May, the National Intelligence Service arrived, bringing with it the Federal Revenue Department, the Federal Savings Bank, Correios, the Federal Police, and other agencies. By the summer of 1980, 30,000 prospectors were resident at the site, many of them badly exploited by the mine owners, who were charging hugely inflated prices for basic goods (such as water, which cost $3 a litre ($11.72 in 2025). The chaotic situation at the mine motivated the military government of João Figueiredo to appoint Major Sebastião Rodrigues de Moura (a.k.a. Sebastião Curió) as overseer of the operation, with the title of Interventor Federal (Federal Comptroller). In late 1980, the Diocese of Marabá established a parish and hospital in the growing village.

The operation of the mine was artisanal, i.e. hand-dug, until 1989. Ore and dirt was dug by shovel and deposited into sacks of up to 60 kilograms (130 lb), which were then manually carried up steep ramps and, later, as the mine deepened, ladders. The ore and dirt was scrubbed, refined, and searched in primitive gold-panning pools at the edge of the pit, and debris was deposited nearby. Sebastião Salgado's 1986 photographs of the mine recount that successful miners were entitled to wear striped shirts if they found a lode. The mine was patrolled by armed soldiers to prevent smuggling and clashes between prospectors.