The Benguet Road was originally a railway project and was to have been built by the British company which owns the Manila and Dagupan Railway. But this syndicate wanted a perpetual grant and a guarantee from the government which could not then be given. It was necessary, in any case, to build a wagon-road before railway construction could be started and Captain Mead, who was sent out at the head of a surveying party, reported that such a road would cost at least $50,000, or $75,000. The Commission appropriated the $50,000 and issued orders to have the work begun, fully expecting to have to add another $25,000 before the road was finished. Nobody knows what character of road Captain Mead had in mind when he made his estimate, but it transpired that nothing short of first-class construction would last through even one heavy rain. Besides, the Bued River Canyon had to be spanned six or eight times with tremendous suspension bridges, and before the project was completed an unwilling government had spent something like $2,500,000 on it. This was spread over a period of years, of course, and much of it went for necessary improvements or for the replacement of storm-wrecked bridges and graded sections, but its enemies like to refer to it as our two and a half million dollar road.

The Manila and Dagupan Railway company extended its road up to the point where the Benguet Road begins and thus a way was opened into the only region in the Philippines where one may find really invigorating air. And while the road was building Baguio development began. A United States Army Camp was established on a ridge overlooking a wide range of pine-covered hills, and a hospital was erected for the accommodation of invalid soldiers who, before these facilities for taking care of them were provided, had always, at great expense to the government, to be sent back to the United States.