Nueva Vizcaya, officially the Province of Nueva Vizcaya, is a landlocked province in the Philippines located in the Cagayan Valley region in Luzon. Its capital is Bayombong. It is bordered by Benguet to the west, Ifugao to the north, Isabela to the northeast, Quirino to the east, Aurora to the southeast, Nueva Ecija to the south, and Pangasinan to the southwest. Quirino province was created from Nueva Vizcaya in 1966.
The name Nueva Vizcaya is derived from the name of the province of Biscay (called Vizcaya in Spanish, Bizkaia in Basque) during the Spanish colonial period. This can be seen in the right part of the seal, a representation of the heraldic of Vizcaya in Spain.
The areas of present-day Nueva Vizcaya used to be part of the vast Provincia de Cagayan. Organized religion in Nueva Vizcaya dates back to the year 1607, when the Dominican Order arrived in the province. It was not until 1609, however, that the first settlement of a religious order was established in the southern half of the province. In 1702, a convent was erected in Burubur at the foot of the Caraballo Mountains in Santa Clara, which is now a barangay in the town of Aritao. It was on this site that the first mass in Nueva Vizcaya was celebrated and the first baptism of a Christian convert was held.
Spanish conquest of Nueva Vizcaya was slow and arduous. Expeditions had to be sent again and again because the natives refused to accept Spanish sovereignty. In some of these expeditions, services of some Filipino chieftains were utilized. The most famous of these expeditions was that commanded by Mariano Oscariz, in 1847–1848, which carried him clear through the province across to Palanan on the eastern coast of Luzon.
In 1839, upon the advice of the alcalde mayor of Cagayan, Luis Lardizabal, then-Governor General of the Philippines created the politico-military province of Nueva Vizcaya. The order was approved by a Royal Decree on April 10, 1841. The original province covered the areas of present-day Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, Ifugao, and a large portion of Isabela, as well as much of Aurora.
Civil government was established in the province by the Philippine Commission in 1902 during the American Colonial Period of the Philippines.
The territories of Nueva Vizcaya were greatly reduced when Nueva Vizcaya ceded a big portion of its north-eastern territory, including Camarag, its first capital, now Echague, to form the province of Isabela in May 1865.
In 1908, the northwestern territory of Nueva Vizcaya was annexed to the newly organized sub-province of Ifugao. The survey executed by the Bureau of Lands in 1914 further caused the diminution of its area and reduced again upon the enactment of the Administrative Code of 1917. North areas of present-day Aurora (composed of present towns of Casiguran, Dilasag, Dinalungan, & Dipaculao) were annexed to Tayabas (now Quezon) in 1905.
The province of Nueva Vizcaya was also included in the 12th district of the Philippine Senate during the American period. The district included Mountain Province (present-day Apayao, Kalinga, Mountain Province, and Benguet), Cotabato (undivided), Agusan (undivided), Davao (undivided), Zamboanga (undivided), and Sulu (undivided). The province was included in the district because of its ethnic compatibility with Mountain Province and other indigenous domains in the Cordilleras and Mindanao.
During the Pacific War of the Second World War, the Japanese captured Nueva Viscaya and established a "comfort station" in the province, where Filipino "comfort women" were enslaved, routinely gang-raped, and murdered under Japanese control. The Dalton Pass was the scene of a major battle between the Empire of Japan, the Commonwealth of the Philippines and American forces, with the Allies winning on May 31, 1945.
In 1971, with the passage of Republic Act No. 6394, Quirino, which was then a sub-province of Nueva Vizcaya, was separated from its mother province and made into a regular province.