Minalin, the egg basket of Luzon

Minalin is small, but its hens are busy. The town is said to produce around a million chicken eggs a day, which has earned it the title Egg Basket of Luzon. In 2008 it held the country's first Egg Festival, a thanksgiving for how far it had come since the Mount Pinatubo eruption of 1991.

A church that moved

The town's name has several stories. One of the best known comes from its founding, recorded by Don Mariano Henson: four founders named Nucum, Mendiola, Intal and Lopez bought land from the datu of Macabebe and named the place Santa Maria after their wives, all called Maria. They planned to build a church there, but a flood carried the lumber to a hill called Burol, and the church was built there instead. The town became Minalis, moved to, from the saying minalis la ding dutung, minalis ya ing pisamban: the lumber moved, so must the church.

Another tale traces it to Mina Linda de las Mujeres, mine of beautiful women, a phrase supposedly coined by Spanish soldiers. A gobernadorcillo, Diego Tolentino, began writing Minalin instead of Minalis, and the spelling stayed.

Farms then and now

By 1860 Minalin produced rice, corn, sugar cane, cacao and indigo, along with nipa wine, vinegar and mats. Today it is eggs, and a famous New Year's parade, Aguman Sanduk.