Pugo La Union

According to folktales, Pugo, the place was formerly named Rancheria Tulosa, a sitio of Barrio Tubao, Agoo, La Union. When a Spanish hunter from Agoo came to hunt, he asked his Filipino guide the name of the low-flying birds that were abundant around the place. The guide said they were "Pogo," and since then bird trappers and hunters named Rancheria Tulosa, Rancheria Pogo. When Barrio Tubao became a town in 1887, Rancheria Pogo subsequently became a barrio of the new town.

During the early years of the township of Pugo, marketing was done in the open and only the people of Poblacion did the buying and selling. When the Agoo-Tubao-Pugo Road was constructed in the 1930's, a temporary market building was constructed. Merchants from Tubao and Agoo began arriving to sell or barter dry goods with Pugo farm products such as bananas, root crops, and others. Later, in the 1960's, a permanent building was constructed.

The Rosario-Pugo Road (built in 1965) and the Marcos Highway (constructed in 1960) contributed vastly to the swell of the volume of both merchants and commodities in Pugo. Commerce and trade boomed and buyers from Pangasinan and the other towns of La Union came to the Municipality for root crops, bananas, tiger grass brooms, and other goods. As a result revenue collection began a considerable upward trend. As mentioned earlier, the first settlers of the original barrios comprising the township of Pugo were cultural minorities who brought with them their customs, traditions, and religion. Although these pioneers belonged to different indigenous groups, their religious rites were so very similar that it was easy for them to follow common rites during festivals, cañaos, and religious prayers. The traditional customs and traditions brought into the place by the first settlers were significant in that (1) they developed unity among the residents, (2) instilled obedience among the youth to their elders, (3) allowed settlement of local offenses and crimes by the old men, and (4) institutionalized the age-old custom of doing community projects in the communal way. Tradition, however, had the adverse effect of obstructing the youth from getting higher education away from their community .

The town market is in the northernmost side of the populated area of the municipality. Seven of its barrios and six sitios are situated south of the town proper and extend further southward along the Pugo-Rosario Road. These seven barrios and their sitios market their farm products in Rosario, La Union because the structure there is much larger than their own. The greater proximity of Rosario ( compared to Pugo) as a market center is also shown by the following comparative distance chart of the barrios to the market centers ofRosario and Pugo (See Table I below). Note that even if Maoasoas Norte is about halfway between Pugo and Rosario, there are regular jeepney trips to Rosario while there are none to Pugo. This shows that the southern barrios of Pugo have been enriching the town of Rosario by way of market collections either directly or indirectly. The other seven barangays ofPugo market their farm products in the Pugo Town Market and sometimes in the public markets of Tubao and Agoo.

At present, Pugo is still supplying the markets of Agoo and Rosario, La Union with livestock and other agricultural products. A considerable amount of these types of commodities are also, marketed in Baguio City and Pangasinan. Pugo folk meanwhile purchase farm inputs such as fertilizers and insecticides in Rosario and Agoo.