La Vega (city)
La Vega, or Concepción de La Vega is the third largest city and municipality of the Dominican Republic. It is located at a province that shares the same name.This city is known as the heart of the Dominican Republic for its geographical position and its large agricultural production methods throughout the province with the same name "Provincia de La Vega".
History
Christopher Columbus built a small fort near present-day La Vega, in 1494. It was intended to guard the route to the interior gold deposits of the Cibao valley. A Spanish settlement known as Concepción de la Vega gradually grew up around the fort, and after 1508, when gold was found in quantity there, Concepción became the first gold boomtown in the continent. By 1510 it was one of the largest and most important European cities in the hemisphere. The town was destroyed and buried by an earthquake on December 2, 1562, and the survivors relocated to the present site on the banks of the Camú River. The site of the ruined town remained largely in farmland until a small portion of the original city was purchased by the Dominican government in the mid-1970s and renamed as National Park of Concepción de La Vega.