San Jose del Monte Foundation Day in the Philippines Date in the current year: September 10, 2025

San Jose del Monte (SJDM) is a component city in the province of Bulacan in the Philippines. Its name means “Saint Joseph of the Mountain” in Spanish. According to the origin story of the name, a group of local hunters found a statue of Saint Joseph while venturing into the local forest, and he became the town’s patron saint. The “of the Mountain” part probably refers to the city’s proximity to the Sierra Madre mountain range.

The area was originally inhabited by scattered groups of indigenous people living along rivers and in the forested highlands near the Sierra Madre. Spanish Augustinian missionaries first arrived in the region in the late 16th century. San Jose del Monte was originally a small settlement under the jurisdiction of the nearby town of Meycauayan.

In 1750, the Archbishop of Manila issued a decree establishing new municipalities in the Meycauayan area. Several families, mostly farmers and stonecutters, volunteered to relocate to these new municipalities from Meycauayan. San Jose del Monte was formally founded as a municipality on March 2, 1752.

For the next century and a half, San Jose del Monte was a peaceful small town whose residents preferred a simple lifestyle. However, during the Philippine Revolution, it became a battleground between the Katipuneros (revolutionaries) and Spanish forces. After the revolutionaries lost the battle, the Spanish burned much of the town, forcing the residents to flee to nearby settlements.

At the beginning of the American occupation in 1901, San Jose del Monte came under the jurisdiction of Santa Maria. However, it became an independent municipality again on January 1, 1918. During World War II, when the Japanese Imperial Army occupied the Philippines, San Jose del Monte became a center of guerrilla resistance due to its hilly terrain and forests, which offered plenty of hiding places to resistance fighters. In January 1945, the town center was bombed twice by American forces.

The town also suffered during the Hukbalahap Rebellion (1946–1951), when resistance fighters burned down the town hall in October 1950 and raided the town again in March 1951. The town’s population began growing in the 1960s when the Philippine government encouraged people to resettle from overpopulated areas, such as Metro Manila, to new communities in sparsely populated regions. The resettlement project aimed to provide housing and rehabilitation for displaced families.

In 1999, Angelito Sarmiento, the representative of Bulacan’s 4th congressional district, filed a bill to convert the municipality of San Jose del Monte into a city. Congress passed the bill in July 2000, and a cityhood plebiscite was held on September 10, 2000. Sixty-two percent of voters supported the conversion, and San Jose del Monte officially became a city.