Notes on Baguio history

BENCHWARMER
Ramon Dacawi

(The following historical vignettes  were compiled in a collaborative effort with the late fellow Baguio journalist Freddie G. Mayo.  Freddie conceptualized and wrote the script for the first ever Baguio Day parade depicting the city’s history, an idea that is being revived for the city’s 104rd foundation anniversary this year.)

One version had it that then Gov. Gen. William Howard Taft, who weighed over 300 pounds, came  up to Baguio on horseback after the Kennon road was opened in 1905. He then excitedly  telegrammed then Secretary of War Elihu Root about his feat.  The other version was that he just went on a horse ride and then  wiredRoot about it, saying he was feeling good. Whichever version was correct, both carried Root’s succinct  wire reply to Taft: “How’s the horse?”

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The early Belgian missionary, Fr. Florimund Carlu, came up to Baguio via horseback from another coastal mission in Tagudin, Ilocos Sur. He arrived in Baguio, sin tabor y trumpetti, towards the late 1910s, was assigned at St. Vincent Parish and then to the Baguio Cathedral. He was able to raise enough money to build the Cathedral, among other sources, Anglicans and Protestants. The bells of the Cathedral were donated by William Marsman of the Benguet Mining Corporation.

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Who knows or remembers Tex Reavis? He was an American sourdough who wandered into the Antamok, Benguet area to prospect for gold. Once his pouch had filled up with gold dust, he would ride up the old Pines Hotel, hitch his mount to the rack, deposit his produce at the bar and treat everybody to any brand. After his order had ran through, it was time to ride back to his Antamok dog hole. An old photograph of this colorful figure panning gold is displayed at the Benguet Corporation function hall in Balatoc, Itogon, Benguet.
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The first private college to be put up after the war was the Baguio Colleges Foundation, now the University of the Cordilleras, followed by the Eastern Philippines College, now the Baguio Central University, then Baguio Tech, now the University of Baguio. St. Louis University started as a parish school in 1909.

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Session Road, Baguio’s main street, got its name from the fact that during the city’s formative years, members of the Philippine Commission would pass through the inclined stretch on their way to their session at the Baden Powell Hall along Gov. Pack Road.The city has also maintained the original Ibaloi names of its streets: Kayang (high), Chuntug (mountain), Chanum (water), Otek (small). Abanao St. got its name from “ambanaw”, the Ibaloy term for ‘wide’ while Chugum St. was from ‘shagem’, thjeIbaloy word for ‘wind’.  Baguio is from “bagiw”, the moss which was then commonly within Burnham Park. Burnham Park was then a swampy area known as Kafagway. The city’s streets are comparatively narrower than those of other urban centers because the American founding fathers designed Baguio for a population of 25,000.
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Construction of the Benguet Road, now the Kennon Road, began in 1901 with an initial fund of P75,000. Its chief engineer Col. Lyman Kennon of the 20th infantry of the U.S. Army, employed some 4000 workers of mixed races to open Baguio as the country’s summer capital.

The workers were representative of 46 nations. Among them were Americans, Hawaiians, Indians, Mexicans, Chinese, Germans, Irish, English, Swedes, French, Japanese and Filipinos. The Japanese composed the majority of the laborers, hundreds of whom plunged to their death on the cliffs in the project that took five years to complete. 

From Saitan, La Union to Baguio, various camps were established as work on the road progressed. That’s why we now have Camp 1, 2, 3 and so on until Camp 8 near the city proper. Because the Americans paid higher wages, thousands of Japanese were attracted and recruited to work in various projects in Davao and Benguet, similar to how the Canadians built their transcontinental railway system with Chinese workers.

The most scenic highway to Baguio, the Kennon Road (then known as the Benguet Road), was completed in early 1905.

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When a sharp-shooting competition was held in San Fernando, La Union among the constables of Northern Luzon, the other contingents were amused at the Igorot delegation for wearing the standard issue of khaki top jackets, and G-strings. The native soldiers had considerable practice at the shooting range at the Camp John Hay and were prepared for the competition. The G-stringed warriors ended all unsavory remarks about their costume by taking all top nine places, with the other Igorot marksman tying up for tenth with a non-G-stringed constable from the lowlands.
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What and where was Topside? It was the imposing home of American Gov. Gen. Cameron Forbes built in 1906 on a promontory within what is now the Good Shepherd Convent at Mines View Park. Baguio anthropologist Patricia Afable noted that “when Forbes was building ‘Topside,’ he wrote in his journal that there were ‘8 Japanese masons, an American Negro, and a few odd Filipinos’ working there. In addition, he had ’30 Igorrotes’. 

To supervise the masonry work, Forbes engaged J.P. McElroy, a former overseer under Kennon, who handpicked the Japanese masons from the Benguet Road work.” (e-mail:mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.)