Garapan Heritage Trail

Welcome to the Garapan Heritage Trail! This map provides information about historic and cultural sites in Garapan Village, a locale that has played a significant role in the island’s history spanning more than three millennia.

The general Garapan area was first settled by the island’s indigenous Chamorro inhabitants roughly 3,000 years ago. Its flat land and proximity to protected fishing grounds offered an attractive settlement area. Remnants of several ancient Chamorro villages lay buried beneath modern Garapan.

In the late 1600s, after the imposition of Catholicism on the Chamorro people by Spanish priests, Garapan became the site of Anaguan, Saipan’s first mission village. Anaguan was occupied until the 1740s at which time the island’s surviving inhabitants were forcibly resettled on Guam. Following Anaguan’s abandonment, Saipan would have no permanent population for nearly 100 years.

In the early decades of the 19th century, Carolinian (Refaluwasch) residents fleeing storm-damaged islands and atolls of the central Carolines, founded a village on the western shore of Saipan that they called Arabwal. The village was named after a vine (Beach Morning Glory) that is commonly found growing on beaches near the water.

By the late 1850s, Arabwal came to include Chamorro settlers from Guam. Due to a growing population, Spanish priests built a Catholic Church in Arabwal in 1858 and officially christened the village San Isidro de Garapan in honor of the patron saint of farming. Carolinian residents lived in the southern section of the village and Chamorros in the north.

In October 1914, Japanese naval forces seized Saipan and the rest of German Micronesia at the beginning of World War I. Like the Germans, the Japanese made Garapan the seat of their colonial administration.

Under Japanese rule, Garapan was transformed from a small, traditional village into a bustling town dominated by immigrants from Japan, including many who came to work in the island’s booming sugar industry. In addition to the seat of administration, Garapan was also the island’s residential and business center. During its heyday in the late 1930s, Garapan Town boasted a population of more than 15,000 residents and a wide variety of commercial establishments and government offices.

This modern township was left in ruins by the World War II battle for Saipan fought in June and July 1944. Following the battle, most of Garapan’s surviving buildings were demolished to make way for needed American military facilities. Only a few of Garapan’s pre-war buildings escaped destruction. Its pre-war residents were relocated to civilian internment camps in the villages of Susupe and Chalan Kanoa.

In the 1960s, island residents began moving back to Garapan thus marking the second time in 220 years that this area was resettled following forced abandonment. The village regained prominence in the 1980s when it became the hub of the island’s visitors industry. Today, Garapan is once again an important village and business center on Saipan.