Captain Charles W. Meade, then serving as city engineer of Manila, was selected to make the survey. There was every theoretical reason to believe him competent, and we did not question either his integrity or his ability. After being absent from Manila for some time, he reported in favour of the Bued River valley route, saying that it was entirely feasible to build a railway along it.
He suggested that, as the construction of a wagon road would be necessary in building the railroad, we might as well undertake that first, and so be able to go to Baguio in wheeled vehicles before the railroad was completed. He asked for $75,000 United States currency, with which to build this road, stating that he expected to be able to do it for $65,000, but would like $10,000 as a margin of safety.
On December 21, 1901, the commission passed an act authorizing the construction of a highway from Pozorubio, in Pangasinán, to Baguio, “the same to be built under the general supervision of the military governor and the immediate direction of Captain Charles W. Meade, Thirty-sixth Infantry, United States Volunteers, who has been detailed by the military governor for that purpose, along the general line of survey recently made by Captain Meade for a railway between said towns.” The $75,000 asked for were appropriated by this act.
Work began promptly at both ends of the line. In June, 1901, I set out on my first trip through the wild man’s territory in northern Luzón. Incidentally, and for my personal satisfaction only, I inspected the work on the road. We had been rather disappointed by Captain Meade’s failure to make more rapid progress. At the lower end I found that delay was being caused by a huge cliff necessitating a very heavy rock cut. I was assured by Captain Meade that from this point on the line ran through dirt most of the way, so that the road could be completed very rapidly. This statement proved to be grossly in error. It took years of hard work to open up the road.
Its cost when finally ready for traffic was $1,961,847.05. Its length was forty-five kilometers eight hundred ninety-one meters,[2] of which thirty-four kilometers were in non-Christian territory. Some ten kilometers of the remainder have since been incorporated in the first-class road system of the province of Pangasinán, as this part is chiefly used by the people of that province in shipping their agricultural products to Benguet, and in maintaining communication between their towns.
The additional cost of the road to date[3] since it was first opened is $792,434, making its total cost to date $2,754,281.05. This includes not only the actual cost of maintenance, but very extensive improvements, such as the metalling of the road from the so-called zigzag to Baguio, the construction of five steel bridges, and the replacing of all the original bridges on the road and of all the original culverts except those made of concrete or masonry.
On my arrival in Benguet in 1901, I found that good progress had been made on the upper end of the road, which had penetrated for a short distance into the cañon proper without encountering any considerable obstacles.
On October 15, 1901, the commission stated in its annual report to the secretary of war, “He[4] has been much delayed by the difficulty of procuring the labour necessary for its early completion, and several months will yet elapse before it is finished!” They did!
On August 20, 1901, Captain Meade was relieved, and Mr. N. M. Holmes was made engineer of the road.
On February 3, 1902, a little sanitarium was opened in a small native house at Baguio. During the following July I was sent to it as a patient, and while in Benguet again inspected the road which had been continued high up on the cañon wall to a point where, on a very steep mountain side, a peculiar rock formation had been encountered at the very grass roots. This rock disintegrated rapidly under the action of the sun when exposed to it. Comparatively solid in the morning, it would crack to pieces and slide down the mountain side before night. A sixty-foot cut had already been made into the precipitous mountain side, and the result was an unstable road-bed, hardly four feet in width, which threatened to go out at any moment.