Doris M. Vazquez
The third Spanish settlement, Arecibo, is located on the northwestern coast of Puerto Rico, and the first information written about it dates it back to 1515 when the King of Spain granted that section of land and the Indians on it to Lope Conchillos. The leader of these Indians was Aracibo and their yucayeque was named after him. It was not until 1606 and under the governorship of Captain Felipe de Beaumont y Navarra that Arecibo was officially recognized as a town. It is believed that the Indians, as was their fate all over the island, died of exhaustion and starvation when working on the roads and bridges in San Juan.
The town was built on a penninsula and in 1616 had eighty families living there. The church and the plaza were in place with two main streets on either side of the plaza, as was the typical format of the newly built towns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
