Name & Section Castro, Judy Ann Rose P.

OBTECNL-2
Date/Time accomplished August 16, 2022 / 12:27 pm
Activity # & Title Activity 6 My Local History in a Flash

Cauayan City is one of the two cities in the province of Isabela located in Region II. The
town got its name from the word "Cauayan" meaning bamboo in the dialect of Gaddang, the
early settlers of this place.

Cauayan was an original town of the Province of Cagayan. It was transferred to Nueva
Vizcaya when it became a province in 1839. Upon the creation of Isabela as a province by a
Royal Decree issued in May 1856, it was reverted as a town of the new province. The town site
was first located in a place called Calanusian along the Cagayan River, but after a series of
disastrous floods, the town site was transferred to its present location.

Historical structures still visible to this day are the big adobe stone church located at the
Poblacion, now called Our Lady of the Pillar Church and the Tabacalera warehouse and La
Insular bodegas found at Barangay Turayong that date their construction during Spanish rule.
With the establishment of the government under the United States of America, Don Domingo
Damatan was appointed as the first “presidente municipal”. It was during the administration of
Mayor Faustino N. Dy (1964-1972) that the municipality started to bounce from a rather slow
development. The town’s development continued at an even faster pace under the late Mayor
Benjamin G. Dy (1983-1992) who envisioned the municipality to become a city. The vision
became a reality under Mayor Faustino G. Dy, III who saw through the introduction of House
Bill No. 9017 and which was signed by Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on
February 28, 2001. Cauayan became a component city of the Province of Isabela after it was
ratified in a plebiscite by a majority vote on March 30, 2001.

Cauayan takes pride in its Gawagaway-yan Festival – a celebration of the city’s bountiful
harvest and merriment for the ethno-linguistic groups in the city from March 30 to April 13. The
city produced the longest Cassava Roll measuring 1.250 kilometers during the Gawagaway-yan
Festival 2005.

Now Cauayan is a landlocked component city in the coastal province of Isabela. The city
has a land area of 336.40 square kilometers or 129.88 square miles which constitutes 2.57% of
Isabela's total area. Its population as determined by the 2020 Census was 143,403. This
represented 8.45% of the total population of Isabela province, or 3.89% of the overall population
of the Cagayan Valley region. Based on these figures, the population density is computed at 426
inhabitants per square kilometer or 1,104 inhabitants per square mile.