--------------------- -----------------------------------------------------The façade of the ZNPPO main building with the Provincial Director,PSSUPT MARIO BIONG YANGA, CEO VI (DSC); Staff Officers and Chiefs of Police/Officers In-Charge of the different city and municipal police stations in the province of Zamboanga del Norte.

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General Information

-----------The province of ZaNorte is in the western portion of Mindanao and lies in the northern part of the Zamboanga Peninsula. It is bounded in the north and west by the Sulu Sea, on the south by the Provinces of Zamboanga del Sur and Zamboanga Sibugay, and on the east by by the Province of Misamis Occidental. It has a land area of 720,592 hectares with more or less 400 kilometers of irregular coastline facing Sulu Sea. With its 25 municipalities and two component cities, ZaNorte has a projected population of 1,003,747 based on the 2000 Census of Population and the people who are predominantly Christian and Cebuano speaking.

The province is strategically located relative to the country’s urban centers of Dumaguete City, Cagayan de Oro City, Metro Cebu and Metro Manila and it also enjoys a generally good weather all year round as it lies outside the typhoon belt of the country and winds seldom exceed 40 kilometers per hour.

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Zambo Norte was already a paradise to the natives, the subanen, long before the Spanish colonizers came. They usually lived along river (suba) banks and coastal areas. Sometime in 1563, some 800 families from Bohol headed by Chieftain Pagbuaya landed in Dapitan. Two years after, a Spanish expedition led by Legaspi and Urdaneta also landed in Dapitan and were received hospitably by Pagbuaya. Later, the Americans came and created the new Provincia Mora which later became the Zamboanga Province with the municipality of Zamboanga (now a city) as capital. During the World War II, the seat of government was transferred to Dipolog. This turn of events initiated a mixture of culture among early ZaNorteans.

On June 6, 1952, the huge Zamboanga Province was divided into two provinces, Zamboanga del Norte and Zamboanga del Sur, making each province an independent community.

This seemingly simple pattern of civilization was made colorful by the coming of Dr. Jose Rizal in Dapitan in 1892. His four years of exile, garnished with the Josephine Bracken romance, is something which other provinces had not experience and will never experience.

The Provincial Government is headed by Honorable Rolando Enriquez Yebes as the Governor and Honorable Francis Hamoy Olvis as the Vice-Governor. The First District of Zanorte is under Congresswoman Cecilia Jalosjos Carreon; Second District under Congressman Rosendo Labadlabad and the Third District under Congressman Cesar Garcia Jalosjos.

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