CITY OF PINES

Seated 5,000 feet above sea level the city of Baguio is one of the most visited of the seven provinces of the Cordillera Central mountain range in northern Luzon, Philippines. The other provinces are Benguet, Abra, Kalinga, Apayao, Mountain Province and Ifugao. Baguio city covers a 57.5 square kilometers of a hilly landscape. Its name was derived from the word bagiw (moss) in Ibaloi, the indigenous language of the region.  Due to its elevation, the temperature in the city is 8 degrees Celsius lower than the average temperature of the lowlands conducive to the growth of moss on trees and plants.

Nicknamed “the city of pines”, Baguio and most of the upper Benguet, Ifugao, Kalinga, Apayao and Mountain provinces are covered with the Philippine pine (Pinus insularis also known as Benguet pine). The same pine specie found in parts of India, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China.

After banishing the Spanish conquistadores from the mountain, the Americans developed  Baguio City in the early 1900’s at an Ibaloi village known as Kafagway (wide open space or valley) which was used for grazing cows and carabaos (water buffalos). This site was chosen among the other existing rancherias (small settlements) in Chuyo, Tongdo, Loacan and La Trinidad, named after the wife of the Spanish Comandante Galvey.   

American architect Daniel Burnham was commissioned to design the city plans. He was honored by the naming  city’s central park after him.

The Americans hired Filipino, Japanese and Chinese workers to build Kennon Road, named after Col. Lyman Walter Vere Kennon who completed the project. Before this, the only road to Benguet was Naguilian Road, a mere horse trail then. 

Every summer, the American government transferred its operations to Baguio to escape Manila's sweltering heat. The Mansion House was built to become the seat of the government. This practice continued on during the Philippine Commonwealth period giving rise to beautiful vacation houses owned by rich Filipino families. Prime properties are still owned today

by the Philippine Government such as the Mansion House, Teachers Camp, Court of Appeals Compound, Supreme Court Compound, Comelec Compound, and others.   Baguio city's Session Road was named after the 1st Philippine Commission's session held in the summer of 1904.

The Americans brought with them education. The educators were  missionaries who had to teach English literacy in order to further Christianity among the Igorots (Baguio natives) who became quite fluent with the language. 

Although the Spaniards originally brought Christianity to Baguio, other foreign missionaries followed suit eventually owning large parcels of land as base for their contemplative life, teach health care, home crafts, and provide services to the community. A few of these places are Brent, Holy Ghost (Pink Sisters) Hill, St. Louis, Dominican Hill, Maryknoll, Good Shepherd and others.

A 695 hectare American military reservation was established called the John Hay Air Station after Pres. Theodore Roosevelt’s Secretary of State John Milton Hay. The base had several barracks, an Army hospital and a summer residence for the Governor-General such as Francis B. Harrison, Luke E. Wright, Leonard Wood, and others. Today the same house is used as a vacation house by the U.S.

Ambassador to the Philippines.

When WW2 broke, the city was not spared from aerial bombardments. In 1941 Baguio succumbed to the Japanese forces.  The air station station barracks were used as internment shelters. The American residence was used by General Tomoyuki Yamashita as his residence and headquarters. It was also where he and Vice Admiral Denshichi Okochi formally surrendered in 1945. In 1991, the Americans turned over the air station to the Philippine Government.

Sometime in the early 50’s, Baguio was introduced to us as alternative summer place from the sandy beaches of Cavite or 100 Islands. Our youth shielded us from the long arduous road trip from Manila up to the tip of the Zig-Zag (Kennon) road leading to Baguio.  The national highway then was rough and dusty often puncturing the tires of our American brand car or Pantranco buses we took. Upon reaching Baguio, we would spend weeks to a month enjoying the company of our relatives and close friends. Although the city felt and looked strange its cold climate, fog, pine forests and scent, fresh flowers and vegetables, red soil littered with quartz stones, ponies, and people who all looked similar, but different from us made our vacations truly memorable.

Our family house was designed with several rooms that could comfortably bunk up three to four families, but quite chilled. It has a fireplace where we lit pine wood roasting hotdogs and marsh mellows on sticks, a long dining table that served Baguio langgoniza (pork sausage), fried eggs and fried rice for breakfast, a living room to play board and card games, a huge downhill garden where we sped down with carton box sleds, and a terrace where we watched the cheesy looking moon surrounded with glittering stars.

 
Other times, we would hike the surrounding woods of Brent and Holy Ghost hills or head down Session road to shop at D &S for DC comics, eat freshly cooked chopsuey, sweet and sour pork with fried rice or just pancit (Chinese noodles) canton in Star Café, watch a movie at Session theater, buy groceries at U-Need or just purchase strawberries at the palenke (wet market). Or ride the scooter and motor cars in Burnham Park or play bowling at the Baguio Country Club.

My favorite activity was riding the Baguio ponies in woodsy trails reliving my passion for picture tube heroes like the Lone Ranger, the Lawman, and Davy Crocket. 

Throughout the coming years, the tradition of having Baguio as a special place for family vacation continued. Passing it down to the next generation not only for the summer months, semestral breaks, simple getting away from it all but most specially spending the Christmas season with the family.

Today, Baguio remains a rest and recreation city for the lowlanders. The John Hay Air Station is now open to the public and simply known as Camp John Hay. It is the classy recreation area version of Burnham Park offering a five star hotel and log house accommodations, 18 hole par 69 golf course, shops, grill and cafes, picnic grounds, convention center, to name a few.   Spiritual retreat houses, Inns, bed and breakfast, fast food, fine dining, bargain stalls and malls line the city. Numerous schools and colleges have mushroomed attracting local and Sokor migrants to over populate the city.

Flower growing, strawberries, cabbage, potato, carrots, lettuce, peas, and beans are Baguio's major produce, while coffee (Arabica or Benguet) growing introduced by the Spaniards still thrives. All these are colorfully displayed and freshly sold in the public market.   
 
Mining gold, silver, copper and other minerals continues in the Benguet. In the 1600's, gold was the lure that attracted the Spaniards to establish a base in Baguio. The Americans and Japanese fell for the same in the City of Pines.

CHIEF SEALTH

Having traveled through the scenic coastal shores of Highway 1 from Big Sur all the way up Mendocino County, one can only surmise that the further north you head the more trees you'll see. True enough satellite photos of Oregon shows a lengthy forested area along its Pacific side from Humboldt, California all the way up to the Washington cascades.

Touring Oregon crossed my mind decades ago, but never the state of Washington. I guess life has so many surprises that one can never really expect to happen.

I've always confused "Washington state" to Washington D.C., the home of the U.S. policy makers. But after seeing both places I have clearly  marked one has having green forests and the other with stone cold monuments. 

Washington's land ownership was under dispute with the British until 1846 when they ceded paving the way for its 42nd place in the Union in 1889.  Named after Pres. George Washington, It is nicknamed “Evergreen State” due to its lush evergreen forests filled with Douglas fir, Ponderosa and white pine, spruce, cedar, and others. Washington is bound in the north by Canada, Montana to its east, Idaho southeast, Oregon on the south and the Pacific Ocean to its west.

60% of Washington's population rests in the Seattle metropolitan area, nicknamed the "Emerald City".  The largest of its cities, Seattle is situated on a narrow isthmus between Puget Sound (an inlet of the North Pacific Ocean) in the west and fresh water Lake Washington to the east. Beyond these waters lie two mountain ranges, the Olympics to the west and the Cascades to the east. Seattle's sierras causes its climate to have a dry-summer with mild wet winters. Light snow falls on the city for a few hours and rarely receives heavy snow similar to the January 1880 snowstorm leaving 6ft of snow.

Seattle also sits within the Cascade Volcanic Arc,  a part of the Pacific Rim of Fire. Five volcanic vents dot Seattle's Cascades: Mt. Baker, Glacier Peak, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams. St. Helens whose recent eruption was in 1980 has the most number of eruptions followed by Glacier Peak. The city is also located in the long Cascadia Fault line which stretches from mid-Vancouver Island down to California. This zone can produce a very strong earthquake to the magnitude of 9.0 or greater. 

Seattle has about 650,000 residents majority of which are Caucasians followed by Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and others.  Seattle is a port city ranked 8th largest in the United States of America and 9th in North America in terms of container handling.

The Native Americans had lived along the shoreline and hillsides of the Seattle area for at least 4,000 years before the first Europeans set foot. In 1851, Arthur A. Denny and his group landed on the shores of the Duwamish River mouth. Traveling further north from the landing area Denny claimed a site which was first called New York. Later to be renamed Alki (a Chinook word meaning someday or by-and-by).  In 1853 Denny’s party decided to resettle east across the Puget Sound. This site was an island called Jijilaetech or "little crossing over place". During low tide the surrounding was exposed allowing people to walk towards the island and back This area is now called Pioneer Square. Denny called the island Dewamps later to be changed to Seattle. David Maynard was one of the proponent’s in renaming Dewamps to Seattle after Chief Sealth of a local Duwamish tribe.

Logging was Seattle's first major industry. Henry Yesler's lumber mill located at the foot of Yesler Way served as the main source of economy of the city. Its products provided lumber to the booming city of San Francisco and the growing towns along Puget Sound.

In the 1870s coal was discovered near Lake Washington and was also exported to San Francisco. Consequently, the Northern Pacific Railway Company built its transcontinental railroad western terminus in Tacoma, forty miles south of Seattle which was later connected to the city in 1883. Having lumber and coal as the primary industries, other businesses grew such as fishing, wholesale trade, shipbuilding, and shipping contributing to
the town's economic expansion and population growth.

During this period, Seattle was gaining 1,000 new inhabitants per month. In a particular month, there were 500 buildings under construction built of wood. In 1889 the expansion was halted temporarily by a devastating fire which leveled the wooden buildings in the heart of the city's business district. There was no record of any fatality in the fire.

This destruction provided the Satellites an opportunity for extensive municipal improvements. A more professional fire department was established, wharves were upgraded as well as the municipal water works. New building codes were enforced requiring structures to be built of bricks and steel. The finance company Washington Mutual (now absorbed by JP Morgan Chase) was founded during this period.

The original land area on which the first settlers built their camps and dwelling places continued to expanded over the surrounding wetlands. Trees were cut, hills were flattened, houses relocated or buried along with filled ravines and reclaimed wetlands.  

The streets of Pioneer Square were elevated between 10-40 feet high from its original grade creating underground walkways alongside business establishments. These were illuminated during the day with skylights imbedded with glass blocks or tubes.


Sewer systems were installed beneath the roadway solving Seattle's perennial sewage outfall which depended entirely on the incoming tide of the sound.

In 1897, the Klondike Gold Rush gave Seattle an economic boost serving as the miners outfitting hub earning the name "Gateway to Klondike". Around 100,000 miners passed through and many chose to stay and invest their hard earned money in Seattle. Famous of these were John Nordstrom (Nordstrom's) and George H. Bartell (Bartell Drugstore).

In the early 1900s, two more transcontinental railroads, the Union Pacific and Milwaukee Road systems reached Seattle and reinforced the city's position as a trade and shipping center with Asia and the North Pacific. It was also in this period when American Messenger Company (now UPS), Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer was founded.

In 1909 a large portion of the Duwamish river mouth expanse was reclaimed building the 350 acre Harbor Island where the Port of Seattle now operates. 

By 1910, Seattle was one of the 25 largest cities in the United States of America. The population became increasingly diversified employing Scandinavian workers in the fishing and lumber business, Japanese running produce or truck gardens and hotels, and African Americans as railroad porters and waiters. Italians, Chinese, Filipino migrants, and Jews who all lived together in a place known today as  the International District.

In 1914 the iconic Smith Tower was completed having 38 floors standing 149 meters high, the tallest office building west of the Mississippi river until 1931.

WorldWar I transformed the city's shipbuilding industry, producing 20 percent of the nation's wartime ship tonnage.

However, the Great Depression did not spare Seattle’s shipbuilding and the lumber trade. Nearly 1,000 unemployed men grew up at an abandoned shipbuilding yard south of Pioneer Square called Hooverville after President Herbert Hoover. 

Growth returned during and after World War II, due partially to the Boeing Company, which established Seattle as a center for aircraft manufacturing. The war's end, however, brought an economic slump again to the area that persisted until the mid-50s.

By the late 19th century the city had become a bustling commercial and shipbuilding center as a gateway to Alaska serving as a supply point for prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Seattle is the birthplace to internationally known companies such as the global coffee company Starbucks founded in 1971, membership only wholesale club Costco (1983), the electronic commerce company Amazon.com (1994). It is home base to REI, Raleigh Bicycle, Microsoft, Nintendo of America, Alaska Air Group, among others. Not to forget Darigold founded in 1918 became a household butter brand name in the Philippines during the late 50's.

Seattle has a colorful musical history. It's jazz scene developed the early careers of Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, and other talents. Seattle is also the birthplace of rock legend Jimi Hendrix and the alternative rock music style known as grunge. 

Actor and Jeet Kune Do founder Bruce Lee lived and is buried in the city's Lake View Cemetery.

Seattle also extends to its local artists opportunities to display their unique talents all over the city whether it be in visual or musical arts. Artists have been commissioned to create art pieces or perform for various government projects.

A very small hilly city compared to San Francisco, Seattle's major points of interest are all accessible by just walking or taking the affordable and efficient Metro system. Art museums, unique sculptures and art pieces are literally littered all over the city making one wonder if the city is an artist's haven.