Among the best known and most visited places in the mountains we can find the Penhas Douradas site. Located in the municipality of Manteigas, district of Guarda, at about 1,500 meters of altitude, it stands out for its chalets and the comprehensive view over the glacier valley of Zêzere. Sousa Martins, a doctor who stood out in the fight against tuberculosis, who was part of the 1st scientific expedition to Serra da Estrela in 1881 organized by the Lisbon Geography Society, considered Penhas Douradas the healthiest place in the country thanks to its pure and fresh air. A consequence of his interest in the place was the construction of a cluster of chalets with sanatorium characteristics. Thus, at the end of the 19th century, the first mountain tourism resort in Portugal emerged.

At the time, road and pedestrian communications to Penhas Douradas were not the best, with no regular transport from the nearest locations to the resort, thus compromising the food and pharmaceutical supply of patients. (FREITAS 1930) Thus, still in 1888, by order of Mr. Councilor and Minister of public works, Emídio Navarro, in order to improve the life of tuberculosis, he ordered the construction of a road that connected Gouveia to Manteigas passing through Penhas Douradas. With the creation of this connection, the telegraph-postal station installed in a granite building implanted in the same alignment as the old observatory, which only served to transmit metrological observations, became open to the general public.

On October 13, 1888, the Forest Services of Serra da Estrela were created and from that moment on, there was a strategic turning point in forest administration, being the first measure of this new organ, in the year of its creation, the afforestation of the Manteigas wastelands. . One of the priority areas to be forested was Penhas Douradas, from July 26, 1888 to 1891, in charge of the meteorological observatory of Serra da Estrela, Augusto Brito Capelo