The soil did it. Terra roxa, the deep red basaltic earth of central São Paulo, is among the best coffee ground on the planet, and Jaú still calls itself the Capital da Terra Roxa. The railway arrived in 1887 and the boom followed immediately. Within two decades the town had built what boom towns build: mansions along the central streets, commercial houses, a covered market, schools, banks, social clubs and squares laid out with money that came out of the ground in sacks. Labour came from Europe and the Levant, Italians above all, then Spaniards and Syrian-Lebanese families, arriving to work the fazendas and staying to open the shops. The most visible survivor of that era is the Catedral Nossa Senhora do Patrocínio, finished in 1901, a neo-Gothic pile fitted out with German stained glass and French tiles, ordered from an ocean away because the coffee could pay for it.

When coffee faded, Jaú did something most old plantation towns never managed: it found a second act. The city built a footwear cluster and specialised hard, concentrating on women's shoes until it dominated the national market. About 200 companies operate in the sector here, employing roughly 10,000 people directly, with peak output reaching 120,000 pairs in a single day. In 2021 the São Paulo state legislature made the nickname official, by state law 17.476, recognising Jaú as the Capital Nacional do Calçado Feminino. Walk the outlet strips along the highway approaches and the specialisation is unmistakable, rack after rack of it. Behind those shopfronts is a supply chain of tanneries, sole makers, lastmakers and small ateliers that has taken sixty years to assemble and cannot easily be moved.

In 1980 a physical education teacher named Fernão de Toledo Castro had a class that could not agree on what to play. Rather than settle the argument, he let both sides win: one team would play handball, and the other, whenever it took possession, would play indoor football. What came out of that afternoon is polibol, a six-a-side court game with a goalkeeper in which points can be scored by goal, by basket, or by hitting an opponent, and which draws on handball, futsal, basketball, volleyball and the Brazilian playground game queimada. Castro built it on the philosophy of judo, meaning a game that trains restraint as much as aggression. It is played in schools well beyond the city now, and in 2019 the municipal legislature declared polibol part of the cultural heritage of Jahu, using the old spelling of the town's name.

Jaú sits at about 541 metres in the geographic middle of central São Paulo state, covering 687 square kilometres with roughly 133,500 people counted at the 2022 census, a density near 194 per square kilometre. Beyond the seat, the municipality takes in three districts: Potunduva, Vila Ribeiro and Pouso Alegre de Baixo. Nightlife is out of proportion to the size of the place, concentrated in the centre and along the marginal avenues, and the restaurant scene runs improbably wide for the interior, with Portuguese, Japanese, French, Italian, Chinese, Arab and German kitchens all represented. That is the immigration history showing up on the menu rather than in a museum, which is generally the honest way to see it.

Jaú is a long drive from anywhere large. From the city of São Paulo the usual route runs the Bandeirantes or the Anhanguera to Limeira, the Washington Luís to Itirapina, then the Paulo Nilo Romano highway in, roughly 290 kilometres in total; the alternative by way of Botucatu and São Manuel is about 314. Morro Vermelho Airport lies 6.4 kilometres northwest of town but has no scheduled service, so commercial passengers use Viracopos at Campinas, around 217 kilometres away, or Leite Lopes at Ribeirão Preto, around 163. Intercity buses are frequent and go almost everywhere in the state. Once you arrive, the cathedral and the shoe outlets are the two things everybody sees, and they sum the place up neatly: the money the coffee left, and the work that replaced it.