Theatricallife: History of Baguio

Years has passed, and as we all can see, there have been a lot of big changes in our fair city (Baguio), even in our country.
Through out the years, since Baguio has discovered, it has gone through a lot of renovations, rebuilding, redesigning, from the 1990's earthquake; and until now, we can all see that Baguio city is still on going for a new transformation. So why don't we take a look on how our city first came to be the summer capital of the Philippines.

Baguio (/bag-gyo/) is a first class urbanized city on the Cordillera Administrative Region in the middle of the Island of Luzon, in the Philippines. Baguio is acknowledge as the Summer Capital of the Philippines because of its cool mountain weather and also known as the City of Pines due to its location that is full of pine trees.

History of Baguio

Spanish Colonizers

Begins at the 19^th century when Spanish started colonizing until Ferdinand Magellan accidentally discovered Philippines while searching the Spice Island. Spanish explored Philippines up to the mountains of northern Luzon. What they found out was a land of a perfect place to apply agriculture and its fullness of precious minerals. The wealth attracted Spanish friars, soldiers and fortune seekers they exploited the natural resources up to the mountains and converted the locals to Christianity.

The Spanish colonial’s government did not find it easy to immediately establish their authority in the region. They found out that the natives, proud,Local Mountain folks was difficult to rule. At first, they had numerous encounters with fierce mountain tribes then they started dividing the land into local government units called “commandancias.” The natives objected and refused to be a part of it. Instead, they moved Higher and deeper into the mountains. Realizing the problem, the Spaniards decided to divide the land into “Rancherias” and was controlled by the landed aristocracy.