HISTORY OF BACOLOD CITY

The city's name is derived from word bakolod, the Hiligaynon word for "stone hill", since the settlement was founded in 1770 on a stony, hilly area, now the district of Granada and the former site of the Bacolod Murcia Milling Company.

The settlement was set up by Malayan people from the Taga-Ilog and settled on a stone hill (which where Barangay Granada stands today). Later on the Moros attacked early one morning and many people had been killed and houses torn down and burnt. The people then decided to move a little farther from the place down to the shore making the stone hill a ghost town.

In the Spanish Era Bacolod city was made the provincial capital of Negros in 1894 and it was the central point of conflict between the Spanish and the Negrenses in 1898. The Filipino forces were surrendered by the Spanish forces with the commanding officer of Spaniards Col. Isidro de Castro and the signing of the Act of Capitulation was carried out at the house of Don Eusebio Luzuriaga which once stood in front of the old city hall.

On March 1899, American forces, led by Colonel James G. Smith, occupied Bacolod. During American Rule, The Rizal Institute was set up in the city in 1903 providing education to the Bacolodnons. La Consolacion College was then set up on 1919 as a private school. The city was officially created on June 18, 1938. Inclement weather meant that the official inauguration had to be postponed twice. It was finally held on October 19, 1938. Bacolod City was occupied by the Japanese forces on May 21, 1942 but was then liberated by the American forces on May 29, 1945.

In this modern era the small settlement grew and emerged as an urbanized city with a population now about 550,000.