Baguio

Baguio, officially the City of Baguio, is a highly urbanized city located in the Cordillera Administrative Region of the Philippines. As of the 2024 census, its population stands at 368,426. The city is widely called the "Summer Capital of the Philippines" because its climate is much cooler than that of the lowlands. Sitting at an elevation of about 1,500 meters above sea level, Baguio lies within the Luzon tropical pine forests ecoregion.

This environment supports mossy plants, orchids, and pine trees, earning it the nickname "City of Pines." Baguio was founded as a hill station by the United States in 1900, built on the site of an Ibaloi village called Kafagway. It was the only American hill station in all of Asia. Classified as a highly urbanized city (HUC), Baguio is the largest city in Benguet.

It served as the province's capital from 1901 to 1916, but it has since been administered independently after becoming a chartered city. Geographically, the Philippine Statistics Authority still places Baguio within Benguet for statistical and geographical purposes. The city is the main hub for business, commerce, and education in northern Luzon, and it is also the most populous city and the seat of government for the Cordillera Administrative Region. By 2025, Baguio's estimated population is about 407,000, reflecting a steady annual growth rate of roughly 1.75% from the previous year.

Etymology

The population has gradually increased over the past decade, growing from 366,358 in 2020 to 392,000 in 2023. The city is part of the larger Baguio Metropolitan Area, which includes surrounding municipalities and had a combined population of around 451,844 in 2024. Indigenous peoples originally called the area Kafagway. The name Baguio came into use during the American period, derived from the Ibaloi word bagiw, meaning moss, which was then Hispanicized as Baguio.

Ibaloi town of Kafagway

The demonym for city natives, Ibagiw, also comes from this root, and it is the name of the city's annual arts festival. Baguio was once a vast mountain zone covered in lush highland forests, teeming with wildlife such as indigenous deer, cloud rats, Philippine eagles, and Philippine warty pigs, along with many plant species. The area served as a hunting ground for the Ibalois and other Igorot ethnic groups. When the Spanish arrived, they never fully subjugated the area due to the fierce defensive tactics of the indigenous Igorots.

Igorot oral history says the Benguet upper class, known as baknang, was founded between 1565 and the early 1600s through the marriage of a gold trader named Amkidit and a Kankanaey maiden who panned for gold in Acupan. Their son, Baruy, discovered a gold deposit there and developed it with hired workers and slaves. In 1755, Augustinian Fray Pedro de Vivar established a mission in Tonglo (Tongdo), outside Baguio, which included 220 people, among them several baknang families.

Spanish rule

He was driven out the following year. The Spanish tried to reclaim the mission in 1759 but were ambushed. This led Governor General Pedro Manuel de Arandía Santisteban to send Don Manuel Arza de Urrutia on a punitive expedition, which ended with the mission being burned down. During Spanish rule in 1846, the Spaniards set up a command post in the nearby town of La Trinidad and organized Benguet into 31 ranchos, one of which was Kafagway—a wide grassy area where Burnham Park now stands.

Kafagway was a minor rancho with only about 20 houses. Most of its lands were owned by a prominent Ibaloi chieftain, Mateo Cariño. The Spanish comandancia, originally located at Bag-iw near Guisad Valley, was later moved to Cariño's house, where the current city hall stands. Bag-iw was the Ibaloi name for the town, meaning "moss," which was historically abundant there.

First Philippine Republic

The Spaniards spelled it as Baguio. During the Philippine Revolution in July 1899, Filipino revolutionary forces under Pedro Paterno liberated La Trinidad from the Spaniards, took over the government, and declared Benguet a province of the new Philippine Republic. Baguio was converted into a "town," with Mateo Cariño serving as its presidente (mayor). After the United States occupied the Philippines following the Spanish–American War, Baguio was chosen as the summer capital of the Philippine Islands.

In 1900, American zoologist Dean Conant Worcester led an expedition after convincing U.S. Secretary of State Elihu Root to order an expedition to a cool place in the northern mountains. Governor-General William Taft, on his first visit in 1901, noted the "air as bracing as Adirondacks or Murray Bay..." On November 11, 1901, the American colonial government expropriated lands in Baguio owned by the Ibaloi people, who were forced to sell. In 1903, Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese workers were hired to build Kennon Road, the first road directly connecting Baguio with the lowlands of La Union and Pangasinan.

Before that, the only road to Benguet was Naguilian Road, which was largely a horse trail at higher elevations. Camp John Hay was established in October 1903 after President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order setting aside land in Benguet for a U.S. Army military reservation for rest and recuperation from the lowland heat. It was named after Roosevelt's Secretary of State, John Milton Hay. The Mansion, built in 1908, served as the official summer residence of the American Governor-General, designed by architect William E. Parsons based on preliminary plans by architect Daniel Burnham.