Looking back at the Lihu’e Plantation: 151 years of history

The roots of Amfac/JMB’s Lihu’e Plantation go back 151 years.

Plans for

commercially growing and milling sugar in Lihu’e began in 1849, when Henry A.

Peirce of Boston sailed to Nawiliwili while on his way to Canton,

China.

Peirce saw the potential for sugar growing in and around Nawiliwili

Bay and bought between 2,000 and 3,000-acres of land between Nawiliwili Stream

to the south and Hanama’ulu Stream to the north. The original plantation

encompassed a good-sized section of today’s town of Lihu’e.

The land had

been taken by the Kamehamehas following the overthrow of the Kingdom of Kaua’i

and was then owned by Governor Kekuanaoa of O’ahu.

The plateau where Lihu’e

town is located today was settled as a village over a decade earlier by

Kaua’i-born Kaikioewa, an early governor of Kaua’i and cousin of Kamehameha I,

sent by the Kamehamehas to rule the Island.

The place name is linked to a

land section near the Kolekole Pass in central O’ahu. Its meaning is translated

as “goose flesh” or “cold chill,” two apt references to the cool climate of the

mountainside district. The first recorded use of the place name “Lihu’e” on

Kaua’i was in journals from the late 1830s.

Peirce’s plantation was the

second started on Kaua’i, following by about 15 years the start-up of Koloa

Plantation on Kaua’i’s south shore as the first commercial sugar plantation in

the Hawaiian Islands.

To finance the plantation, Peirce made a partnership

with Charles Reed Bishop, the founder of Bishop Bank, the forerunner of today’s

First Hawaiian Bank, and William L. Lee, chief justice of the Supreme Court of

the Hawaiian Kingdom. The mission statement for the business was “to buy lands,

cultivate cane and manufacture sugar at Nawiliwili on the island of Kaua’i.”

The company was named H. A. Peirce & Co., with the Boston businessman

putting up half of the $16,000 in capital.

The partners built their mill

along Nawiliwili Stream in Nawiliwili Valley at the same location as today’s

Lihu’e Plantation mill.

In 1853, a first crop of 108 tons of cane was

ground. The pioneer growers faced many problems including a drought, a blight

of “yellow drooping leaves” and a flood in 1854 that flattened the fields and

cut the harvest down to 50 tons.

In the early years of the plantation,

only a tenth of its land was planted in sugar. The greater part of the

plantation was covered with a forest of koa, hau, kukui and ahakea trees.

The first fields were cleared by oxen and were located near the mill along

Nawiliwili Stream. The first field cleared is still known as Halo after its

former Hawaiian tenant, and was located north and east of today’s civic center.

A stand of native forest trees was left untouched for decades to mark the

site.

The plantation’s first mill was developed next to a dam built to

provide water power to drive the three-ton, four and one-half feet long

iron-bound granite crushers brought from China in 1852 to mill cane.

A red

brick chimney was erected in 1851, and an innovative centrifugal sugar dryer

built by David Weston of Honolulu Iron Works was purchased in Honolulu. Syrup

was boiled in open kettles, similar to the try pots used aboard whaling

ships.

Victor Provost, an expert sugar boiler employed at Koloa Plantation,

joined the mill workforce at Lihu’e and helped to bring success to the

operation, later becoming plantation manager. By 1854, the mill’s capacity was

increased to three tons per day, while the earlier investors spent five times

their original capital to make it profitable.

Peirce returned to Boston in

1852, but kept up an active interest in the plantation. J.H.B. Marshall, a

Honolulu businessman who was well-connected with the royal court in Honolulu,

was the first plantation manager of record, serving in 1853 and 1854 and

receiving $1,000 a year in salary.

In 1854, William Harrison Rice, the

patriarch of Kaua’i’s kama’aina Rice family, bought an interest in Peirce’s

plantation and became manager at a salary of $400 per year, with a depressed

Marshall returning to Honolulu. His perks included a house, firewood, pasture

and garden land and an orchard.

By 1859, Marshall and other new partners

from Honolulu invested in the fledgling plantation and changed its name to The

Lihu’e Plantation Co., with Peirce selling his interest to Provost and Rice.

The German, Honolulu-based firm of H. Hackfeld & Co. served as

agents.

Heinrich Hackfeld, a German merchant sea captain, started his

company in Honolulu in 1849 and became connected to Kaua’i when he became the

agent for Koloa Plantation in 1853.

In the 1850s, laborers in the

plantation fields were mostly Hawaiians, with Chinese immigrants operating the

mill.

Drought often ruined sugar crops in Lihu’e, forcing growers to cut

the withering cane down to its roots. This problem was resolved in 1856-57 when

Rice engineered and built the 10-mile Lihu’e Ditch, Hawaii’s first large-scale

irrigation ditch, and used it to bring water down from Kilohana Crater and to

cut reliance on rainfall to water fields. It cost $7,000 to build.

In 1858,

25-year-old German immigrant Paul Isenberg joined the plantation following a

stint on the Brown family’s former ranch overlooking Wailua Falls, an operation

then run by Hoffschlaeger and Co. Isenberg became manager of Lihu’e Plantation

in 1862. His stint lasted until 1878. The company incorporated in 1872.

The

plantation’s land holdings increased in 1866 with the purchase of 300 acres at

Ahukini, and later when 17,000 acres were added at Hanama’ulu in 1872. In 1878,

30,000 acres were leased at Wailua.

As it was impractical to haul cane by

oxen-driven cart from the northern lands to the mill at Lihu’e, a new mill was

erected at Hanama’ulu in 1877 for grinding cane grown on the north side of

Hanama’ulu Gulch.

A railway system began to replace oxen carts in 1891 and

greatly sped up the transport of cane from field to the mill in Lihu’e.

By

1900, some 1,600 workers were employed by Lihu’e Plantation, including

Japanese, Portuguese and a few Hawaiians, Koreans and Puerto Ricans.

Plantation housing was provided with camps built in and around Nawiliwili

Valley. Filipino workers began arriving about 1906.

By 1910, Lihu’e town

was the island’s capital and a growing government and commercial center thanks

to the income provided by Lihu’e Plantation and nearby Grove Farm Plantation.

Company lands were also sold for the site of the new county building.

The

plantation helped the community by providing land and support for one of the

best hospitals in the Islands, and for schools and churches, including the

first Lutheran church in Hawai’i. The plantation also set up a ranching and

dairy farm operation to feed its workers and their families, and backed the

first general stores in the area.

Lihu’e Plantation greatly expanded in

1910 with the purchase of Col. Spalding’s Makee Plantation at Kealia. The

6,000-acre Princeville Plantation was purchased from the Wilcox family in

1916.

During World War I, German-controlled Hackfeld & Co. was seized

by the U.S. government and sold at auction to a group of Hawai’i businessmen.

As part of the deal, Lihu’e Plantation Co. Ltd. became a subsidiary of

Honolulu-based American Factors Ltd. in 1922.

Electrification of the Lihu’e

mill was accomplished in the early 1920s, with hydroelectric-generated

electricity. Gradually, the mill’s electrical lines snaked out throughout

Lihu’e town, and by 1937 all plantation homes from Lihu’e to Kealia had

electric lights.

A main aim of the purchase of Princeville Plantation was

to allow diversion of waters from the south branch of the Hanalei River to

boost Lihu’e Plantation’s irrigation and hydroelectric power capacity.

By

1935, the operations of the Lihu’e and Makee mills was combined and the

upgraded 21-roller mill at Lihu’e could grind 150 tons of cane per hour. The

company was well-diversified in this era, becoming the key employer for the

east side of Kaua’i. Under the management of Caleb E.S. Burns, who began work

in 1933, Lihu’e Plantation’s holdings included the Waiahi Electric Co., a ranch

at Princeville, the East Kaua’i Water Co., Ahukini Railway Co., Makee

Plantation, plus land holdings used for pineapple growing by Kapa’a-based

Hawaiian Canneries.

Two years ago, much of the Makee Sugar Co. lands were

sold to investors who are developing lots along the coast while working on

plans for mauka forest lands in Kealia Valley.

A Japanese submarine

launched bombs that landed in a Nawiliwili cane field just weeks after the

bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. With the threat of Japanese invasion,

the Lihu’e Plantation mill was camouflaged with paint.

A number of workers

left the plantation for high-paying defense work in Honolulu and to serve in

the military, creating a labor shortage. Blackouts at night, the planting of

cane fields with diversified food crops and other shortages affected the

plantation. In spite of the problems, in September 1944, an excellent harvest

was celebrated by the 5,000 people who attended Lihu’e Plantation’s first

Harvest Home Festival.

The end of the war brought the return of veterans,

who helped bring in a record harvest of almost 60,000 tons of cane in 1947. The

post-war era also brought about political changes and the unionization of

plantation workers.

The bulk sugar warehouse located above the docks at

Nawiliwili opened in 1950, and short-wave radiotelephone transmitters were used

to allow quick communication throughout the plantation.

The plantation

continued to prosper during the 1950s, and much of the growth of modern-day

Lihu’e took place on its lands. The wood-frame headquarters of the plantation

were replaced by a modern concrete building which still serves as the main

office of Lihu’e Plantation. The Lihu’e Plantation Store, with its trademark

wooden sailor looking through a telescope, was a center of retail sales in the

town.

American Factors became Amfac in the mid-1960s, and the company was

purchased in 1988 by JMB Realty of Chicago. Since then, the company has been

known as Amfac/JMB.

The plantation suffered through the after-effects of

Hurricane ‘Iwa in 1982 and Hurricane ‘Iniki in 1992.

In the late 1990s,

Amfac Sugar Kaua’i encompassed Lihu’e Plantation and Kekaha Sugar Co. Milling

operations were closed at Kekaha, and the mill at Lihu’e is processing the

final Kekaha Sugar harvest of West Side cane.

This week, the mill at Lihu’e

still steamed away near the same spot as the plantation’s first mill. In the

near term, the mill is set to continue to generate electricity. No long-term

decisions for the longtime landmark have been announced, though the mill could

be dismantled and its parts sold to foreign agricultural

companies.

New media manager Chris Cook can be reached at 245-3681

(ext. 222) and ccook@pulitzer.net