A modern city with great architecture, Bayamon is considered the second most modern city in all of Puerto Rico, next to neighboring San Juan.
Bayamon is one of Puerto Rico's largest cities, and it's situated in what is considered to be the Metropolitan Area. It shares its metropolitan area status with San Juan, Guaynabo, Canovanas and Carolina.
Bayamon was always a progressive city. The only reason that, unlike Ponce, Aguadilla and Mayaguez, it doesn't count with an airport is it's proximity to San Juan, but if it were not as close to the capital city, it probably would.
But Bayamon's real progress came during the tenure of Ramon Luis Rivera as mayor. He lasted in the city hall from 1976 to 1992. Rivera was asked by his party, the New Progressist Party, to run for governor, but the main reason why he didn't do that was his lack of understanding of English. However, he thought of Bayamon as his piece of art, and he shaped it into an incredible city in which to live.
During his tenure, he built many exotic touristic atractions that Bayamoneses, Puerto Ricans and international tourists have enjoyed for years. These include El Parque del tren, which is a park featuring what was, until 2003, Puerto Rico's only working train, and an example of a DC-3 that used to fly for United Airlines, a holding bridge believed to be one of only 3 of its type in all of Puerto Rico, a science park known as Parque De Las Ciencias which many people have described as the Disney World of the Caribbean, and last but not least, city hall itself.
Rivera built a city hall that is as spectacular as Bayamon itself, a building that crosses over an avenue, and is believed to be the only one of its class around the world. Visitors inside the building can look down and see cars passing right under their legs. The building has a bridge that connects people from one side of it to the other.
Bayamon is also one of the cities to host the Tren Urbano in 2003. Tren Urbano is Puerto Rico's second working passenger train, after Bayamon's park trensito.
Famous Bayamoneses include Luis Francisco Oller, Chuito el de Bayamon, and world boxing champions Hector 'Macho' Camacho and Daniel Santos.
The famous boxing fight between Alexis Arguello and Alfredo Escalera was held there in 1978.
The Vaqueros De Bayamon are the city's BSN representatives and the team with the most championships in history, with 13.
There is also a ' Vaqueros' baseball team, but this one hasn't had as much luck as their basketball counterparts.