 The United States took control of Puerto Rico from Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898 and conducted its first census of Puerto Rico in 1899, finding that the Caguas was 19,857.In 2002, Caguas was the site of the 2002 USAF Hercules air disaster.Hurricane Maria on September 20, 2017 triggered numerous landslides in Caguas with the significant amount of rainfall.