Cataño, Puerto Rico
municipality in Puerto Rico
Cataño (Spanish pronunciation: [kaˈtaɲo]) is a town and municipality on the northeastern coastal plain of Puerto Rico. It is west of the capital San Juan, east of Toa Baja, north of Bayamón and Guaynabo, and south of San Juan Bay. Part of the San Juan metropolitan area, Cataño is spread over 7 barrios and the downtown area and administrative center of Cataño Pueblo. It is the smallest municipality of Puerto Rico by land area.
History
Hernando de Cataño was chosen to offer his medical services in Puerto Rico during Francisco Bahamonde de Lugo's tenure as Governor of Puerto Rico (1564–1568). He was one of the first physicians who arrived in Puerto Rico during its colonization and, upon accepting his position, received as payment a piece of land across the San Juan islet. From that time, the region started to be recognized by the name of its original owner. As people started establishing in the area, Cataño was declared as a barrio of Bayamón. However, there wasn't much success in the town's development during these years due to its swamp-like terrain. Still, around 1690, a hermitage was established to allow residents to receive religious services without having to travel to Bayamón.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cataño, Puerto Rico” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.