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This period of civil strife delayed the
development of the municipality and the atmosphere of fear intensified during
the War of a Thousand Days, begun on October 17, 1899 and ended on November 21,
1902, because the conservative hegemony was in power, maintained strict control
over the liberal guerrillas who roamed the upper area of the town, threatening
to take the village. Another constraint to growth of the population in
this period was the appearance of smallpox in 1903, a terrible epidemic that
twenty years ago had left 1,500 dead and hundreds healed. With the creation of
the Department of Caldas on June 5, 1905 Villa Maria which had been formed in
the district July 26, 1878 became part of the new departmental cell. About
this time of the century the town that had concentrically organized according
to traditional patterns of colonizers (Orthogonal grid), inherited from
the Spaniards, changes in the longitudinally along the wagon 5th. By
then he had already started growing coffee in the region and the population was
increasing, largely because of the rush area overhead cable and Railroad
Caldas, which attracted many workers of Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Tolima and Cauca.
The cable way was opened in 1927 and its usage time of just a few
years was conceived as a way of expediting the work of railway Caldas and help
in rebuilding after the dreadful Manizales fires of 1925 and 1926.
The first railroad locomotive came Caldas
to Villamaría in September 1927. The railroad constituted a major factor in the
agricultural development of a large segment of our Municipality. The aerial
cable railway Caldas and were the first mechanical means of transportation in
our work ox replaced the mule. Later the advent of motor vehicles
necessitated the construction of the road Villamaría-Manizales, launched in
