First Wagon Road

Baguio’s steam-powered cars and motorized bikes• Oct 20th, 2008 •
Did you know that among the first motorized vehicles to pass through Kennon Road were steam powered cars and motorized bicycles? Photographs from the American Historical Collections in Ateneo depicted French-made De Dion-Bouton cars parked at Camp One, Kennon Road circa 1908. The De Dions have the peculiar bicycle-like spoked wheels and a giant Mercedez Benz-like logo in front.
A photograph from the Halsema collections said the De Dions were specifically imported into the country to suit the serpentine roads of the old Benguet and were of two types: one was for passenger traffic, which had an eight cylinder 70-horsepower motor, a 3.54 bore, and 5.51 stroke mounted on pneumatic tires. The other type was a freight carriage with a four-cylinder 40-horsepower motor, a four and three-fourths bore, five and one-eighths stroke, and solid rubber tires. There were no other De Dion cars in the Philippines, the photo caption said. The Bureau of Public Works Baguio Division, in a 1912 report, narrates that a fleet of 18 De Dion automobiles were servicing Benguet (Kennon) Road through the Benguet Automobile Line. That year, the transport firm carried 19,000 passengers and 5,161 tons of load.
* * * * * * * * * *However, the De Dion-Bouton cars were not the first to traverse Kennon Road. Sometime in March 1909, then governor general William Cameron Forbes and his assistant Warwick Greene tried out two Stanley steam-powered automobiles at Baguio’s expensive mountain road. A photograph from the Stanley Museum in Kingfield, Maine showed Forbes and Greene aboard a Stanley nine-seater Mountain Wagon at Kennon Road. It is believed that Forbes influenced the purchase of the initial fleet of 40 Stanleys in the country as these were manufactured in Boston where he and his family lived. The Stanley Mountain Wagons were used in the White Mountains of England and the Rockies in Western US. The two Stanley steam driven cars at Kennon Road that carried Forbes and Greene were operated by the Bureau of Posts.* * * * * * * * * *In the mid 1920s the Stanley steam cars apparently disappeared from general use in Baguio, probably because they required a lot of water especially in difficult terrain, and water had always been a problem in Baguio. This paved the way for the entry of bigger, more powerful, and petroleum-powered De Dions.* * * * * * * * * *After the completion of the Benguet Road on Jan. 29, 1905, it was only opened on March 27 that year. From the time of its opening until 1909, it was used as a passage for bull carts and mule drawn wagons, similar to the stage coach line familiar to viewers of Western movies.
* * * * * * * * * *