Benguet

Benguet's history is inseparable from gold. Pre-colonial Ibaloi communities traded gold with lowland traders who brought it to the coastal ports and into the wider Southeast Asian commodity networks. The Spanish knew about Cordillera gold and from 1572 made repeated attempts to control the mines, none of which succeeded. It took the Americans to establish systematic mining extraction.

Anti-mining activism in Benguet has been persistent since the 1970s. Indigenous communities whose ancestral lands cover mine sites have fought — sometimes violently, often legally — to assert rights over their territory. The issue remains unresolved.

The Ibaloi are the indigenous people most associated with lower Benguet and the areas closest to Baguio. Historically, the Ibaloi were known for the practice of mummification — preserving their dead through smoking and then placing them in sitting position in burial caves. Many of these mummies lie in caves in Kabayan; the Kabayan Mummy Burial Caves were declared National Cultural Treasures in 1973, and the National Museum keeps a branch in Kabayan.

The Kankanaey

The Kankanaey inhabit the higher elevations of Benguet and much of Mountain Province. They are known for the dap-ay system — the traditional men's house and council space where community governance, rituals, and education of young men took place. The dap-ay is a physical expression of a democratic community structure that operated without formal chiefs.

Mining and Indigenous Rights

The conflict between Cordillera mining interests and indigenous land rights has defined Benguet's political life for decades. The Chico River dam campaign of the 1970s and 1980s, which successfully stopped a dam that would have flooded ancestral Kalinga territory, produced a model for indigenous resistance that communities in Benguet have drawn on in their own fights against mining expansion.

Benguet's highland climate makes possible foods unavailable in the lowlands: strawberries, temperate vegetables (lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, carrots), and cut flowers. The province supplies a significant portion of Luzon's fresh vegetable market. Local cooking reflects this abundance of cool-weather produce alongside the Cordillera staples of smoked pork and root crops.

Benguet has two primary indigenous languages: Ibaloi (spoken in lower Benguet and the areas closest to Baguio) and Kankanaey (spoken in the higher municipalities). Both are Cordilleran languages, but on different branches: Ibaloi belongs to the Southern Cordilleran group with Pangasinan, which it closely resembles, while Kankanaey is Central Cordilleran, alongside Bontoc and Ifugao. Kalanguya, spoken in the east of the province, is another Southern Cordilleran language.

Baguio City's influence on Benguet's linguistic landscape is significant. The city is multilingual — Tagalog, Ilocano, Kankanaey, Ibaloi, and English are all in use — and that multilingualism extends into surrounding Benguet municipalities. Young people in La Trinidad and Baguio's surrounding barangays often use Tagalog as their primary language.

English is strong in Benguet, particularly in areas connected to the university and mining sectors. The University of the Cordilleras and Benguet State University, both in the Baguio-La Trinidad area, maintain significant English-medium instruction.

Benguet is visited primarily through Baguio City, which serves as the base for most highland Luzon travel. La Trinidad's strawberry farms are a standard day trip from Baguio. The province's own municipalities — Kabayan, Bokod, Kibungan — require more effort and reward it with less crowded landscapes.

Benguet sits at the southern end of the Cordillera Central, and almost all of it is mountain. Mount Pulag in Kabayan, at 2,928 meters the highest peak in Luzon and the third highest in the Philippines, stands where Benguet meets Ifugao and Nueva Vizcaya; it was proclaimed a national park on 20 February 1987, covering 11,550 hectares, and is known for its mossy montane forest, its grassland summit and the sea of clouds at dawn. The province's mountains are the headwaters of the Agno, Amburayan, Bued, Bakun, Balili and Asin rivers, and its largest conservation areas are the Upper Agno River Basin Resource Reserve, Mount Pulag National Park, Mount Data National Park and the Lower Agno Watershed Forest Reserve. Lower slopes are covered by open forests of Benguet pine, the dominant tree of the Luzon tropical pine forests. Fire is a constant risk in the dry months: in January 2018 trekking on Mount Pulag was suspended after a fire, reportedly started by a hiker's butane stove, burned part of the mountain.

Northern Luzon Giant Cloud Rat

Phloeomys pallidus

Least Concern

One of the largest rodents in the world, 75 to 77 centimeters long including its furry tail and weighing up to 2.6 kilograms. It lives in the forests of northern Luzon, feeds on leaves at night, and is completely harmless; its fur is usually pale with dark patches, often with a black mask.

Field note: Hunting and forest loss are its main threats. Report captive animals offered for sale to the DENR.