The growth of a transportation system in Minas Gerais, especially the construction of a rail network in the province's booming coffee region, the Zona da Mata (the Forest Zone) in the late Empire, is an important chapter in the state's history. A close look at railroads in the Mata and in Minas tells us much about politics and the power and influence of certain groups, particularly planters and planter-politicians. Conflicts over railroad concessions provoked much rivalry within the Mata, but all mineiros agreed that transportation was the most important issue of the day. Meanwhile, flumimnses and paulistas were more preoccupied with the labour crisis. Hindsight permits us to say that transportation is not the key to understanding the development of Minas, at least not to the extent that contemporaries thought it was. Ecological factors, labour conditions and the onset of the national overproduction crisis in 1896 had more to do with the rise and fall of coffee exports than did railroads. However, coffee planters from the wealthy Mata and other mineiros from the province's less prosperous regions always credited railroads with the good things that went with economic development.