Serra do Bouro is one of the sixteen civil parishes

Parish (subnational entity)

A parish is an administrative division used by several countries. In the British Isles it is known as a civil parish to distinguish it from the ecclesiastical parish.-External links:* Editorial in The Guardian, 2011-05-16....

 (freguesia

Freguesia

Freguesia is the Portuguese term for a secondary local administrative unit in Portugal and some of its former colonies, and a former secondary local administrative unit in Macau, roughly equivalent to an administrative parish. A freguesia is a subdivision of a concelho, the Portuguese synonym term...

s) that make up the municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 (município

Municipalities of Portugal

In Portugal, municipality or concelho is the most stable subdivision of Portugal since the foundation of the country.Portugal has an entirely separate system of cities and towns. Cities and towns are located in municipalities, but often do not have the same boundaries, even if built-up is continuous...

or concelho

Concelho

Concelho , in the Portuguese language, is the word municipality, when referring to the territory. The word município is used when municipality means the organ of State...

) of Caldas da Rainha

Caldas da Rainha

Caldas da Rainha is a city in western central Portugal. The city serves as the seat of the larger municipality of the same name and is the seat of the Comunidade Intermunicipal do Oeste...

, Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

. The parish has an area of 18.2 km² and 720 residents. It the least populous freguesia of the municipality.

Localities (lugares) within Serra do Bouro include
Cidade,
Cabeço da Vela,
Casais Antunes,
Casais da Boavista,
Casais da Cidade,
Casais da Espinheira,
Casal do Celão,
Espinheira,
Granja,
Zambujeiro.
Serra do Bouro has cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

.

Principal activities of the inhabitants include agriculture and civil construction.

Serra do Bouro once belonged to the municipality of Óbidos, but the freguesia was transferred to Caldas da Rainha as this latter municipality developed economically. Two other freguesias of Caldas da Rainha were once part of Serra do Bouro, but were elevated to the status of freguesia themselves: Foz do Arelho

Foz do Arelho

Foz do Arelho is one of the sixteen civil parishes that make up the municipality of Caldas da Rainha, Portugal...

 in 1919 and Nadadouro

Nadadouro

Nadadouro is one of the sixteen civil parishes that make up the municipality of Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. The parish has an area of 9.7 km² and 1,422 residents...

 in 1957.

History

The area of Serra, as the locals know it, was first inhabited by the Veiga family in the 16th century. This freguesia changed little throughout much time. Electricity and municipal water reached Serra in the 1980s.

Throughout the 1900s most of the area's inhabitants emigrated to other countries, particularly to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. One of the greatest concentrations of Serra do Bouro descendants is in the area of Perth Amboy, New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 (sister city to Caldas da Rainha

Caldas da Rainha

Caldas da Rainha is a city in western central Portugal. The city serves as the seat of the larger municipality of the same name and is the seat of the Comunidade Intermunicipal do Oeste...

).

Serra has a cemetery called the "Cemitério dos Ingleses" (English Cemetery) where remains of two children and 6 women are buried from the October 28, 1892 shipwreck

Shipwreck

A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

 of the S.S. Roumania, an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 ship

Ship

Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing,...

.