Photo of a Portion of the Batangas-Ibaan Road [July 1914 BPW Quarterly Bulletin]

This photograph is part of a series showing mostly construction projects undertaken by the Bureau of Public Works during the American colonial era. All photographs have been digitally extracted from the Quarterly Bulletins of the bureau and processed using graphics editing software to improve quality. It goes without saying that the eventual output of each extract was always going to be dependent on the quality of the original scan.

Road construction not only in Batangas but also elsewhere in the Philippines was among the top priorities of the new American colonial government as early as 1900. The task of constructing these roads fell upon the Bureau of Public Works. By 1914, road construction was ongoing at a feverish pace. The bureau even brought into Batangas a stone-crushing power machine for the creation of macadam with which the roads would be built.

In the July 1914 edition of the bureau’s Quarterly Bulletin, while it admired the previous Spanish colonial government for laying down a complete road network, the bureau also lamented that they did not, however, actually follow through in the actual construction of the roads.

Hence, in 1914 there were still roads in Batangas that needed to be paved, such the one below at Kilometer 116 along the Batangas to Ibaan Road. It was still unpaved in 1914 and most likely unpassable during the rainy season.

¹ “Bureau of Public Works Quarterly Bulletin, Volume 2 No. 4,” compiiled by C.A. Tansill, published July 1914 in Manila by the Bureau of Public Works.