Formosa's name means beautiful, but its first name was less picturesque. Arraial dos Couros, the Leather Tent Camp, got its name from enslaved black laborers who founded a settlement on the banks of the Itiquira and Parana rivers in the eighteenth century. A devastating malaria outbreak swept through that early village, and the survivors fled uphill to higher, drier ground. The tradesmen who gathered at the new settlement covered their improvised huts with leather from the loads they were carrying, hence Arraial dos Couros. One alternative theory suggests the name came from a local artisan who specialized in saddlebags and rawhides. Either way, the name stuck until August 1, 1843, when the settlement was elevated to town status as Vila Formosa da Imperatriz, in honor of Empress Teresa Cristina and the beauty of the surrounding landscape. The municipality of Formosa was formally created on February 22, 1844.

Formosa sits in the heart of the Cerrado, the second largest of Brazil's ecoregions. The Portuguese word cerrado means dense or closed, which is counterintuitive for a region of open tree and scrub savanna, but the density refers to the thick bark of the trees that survive the annual fires sweeping across the landscape. Cerrado trees grow twisted trunks covered in rough bark; their leaves are broad and rigid; their roots run deep. Within the Cerrado you find guara wolves, armadillos, the small rhea called ema, two species of monkey (prego and howler), and the occasional jaguar. The Cerrado supports 80 bat species, 42 percent of all Brazilian mammalian diversity. Birds abound, with parakeets, macaws, caracaras, toucans, and the ubiquitous black vulture called urubu. Termite hills cover parts of the landscape in a geography only they understand. At dusk, fireflies light up the air. The ipe roxo, the purple ipe tree, blooms briefly but stunningly when it flowers.

About 30 kilometers north of Formosa, the Itiquira Falls drop in one of the highest vertical waterfalls in Brazil, setting the landscape's most dramatic feature. The surrounding region is rich in caves, canyons, and smaller waterfalls. The Buraco das Araras, discovered in 1912, is one of the largest quartzite dolinas (sinkhole caves) in the world, 126 meters deep, holding tropical vegetation, ancient trees, volcanic rocks, and wildlife that still finds shelter there. The parrots that gave the Hole of the Macaws its name are mostly gone, driven out by illegal pet-trade poaching, but the crater still dwarfs anything built by human hands. Nearby Buraco das Andorinhas, the Hole of the Swallows, is another sinkhole with a subterranean lake. The Paranã River begins in a series of streams four kilometers from the city center of Formosa and runs 500 kilometers north, gathering more than 30 tributaries along the way.

Formosa's economy was historically based on extensive cattle ranching, and cattle still dominate, with 237,000 head on the land as of the 2006 census, of which 25,800 are dairy cows. Most of this cattle is sold into the Federal District's two-million-person market next door. The Gaucho migration changed everything else. Ranchers from Rio Grande do Sul brought soil correction, drought-resistant imported grasses (braquiara), pasture rotation, and commercial grain agriculture. Soybeans, corn, rice, and beans now move through the municipality in volume. Grain storage silos have risen on the outskirts of town, and local shops now specialize in machinery repair and agricultural inputs. The GDP shifted with these technologies: in 2005 the total was R$428 million, with services supplying R$290 million. Formosa is one of the fastest growing cities in Goias, with a population of 123,684 in 2020.

Four kilometers from the center of Formosa lies Lagoa Feia, the Ugly Lake, whose name seems deliberately self-deprecating for a body of water that is neither especially ugly nor small. The Preto River begins here, flowing south toward the Sao Francisco basin and eventually to the Atlantic. Part of the southern bank belongs to an army base used for field training. The name likely arose from the contrast with nearby clearer waters; Lagoa Feia's color varies with sediment from seasonal rains. The lake sits at the edge of town, an everyday place for residents who come for picnics and fishing. It represents what Formosa does well, a mid-sized city with frontier flavor, ranch country stretching away on three sides, rivers beginning on its doorstep that will flow to three oceans. The beauty the town was named for is here, modest but uncomplicated, and easy to see if you slow down long enough to look.