LIHU‘E — Step into Kaua‘i’s sugar-rich history with a tour of Grove Farm Museum, remains of one of the earliest sugar plantations in Hawai‘i. The 100-acre farm in the heart of Lihu‘e maintains buildings, barns, gardens and animal pens for
LIHU‘E — Step into Kaua‘i’s sugar-rich history with a tour of Grove Farm Museum, remains of one of the earliest sugar plantations in Hawai‘i. The 100-acre farm in the heart of Lihu‘e maintains buildings, barns, gardens and animal pens for visitors to tour Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Tours are offered at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. by reservation only.
“We are not only preserving homes and grounds, we are preserving lifestyles and maintenance routines,” said museum Director Bob Schleck. “A philosophy here between Elsie and Mabel (Wilcox) was ‘good preservation is good housekeeping,’ and they were meticulous.”
Ducks, hens and pigs still thrive on the farm. The two-hour tour includes a leisurely walk though flower gardens, an orchard and authentically-furnished dwellings. Mabel Wilcox’s last working vehicle still sits in the barn.
Mabel and Elsie were Wilcox cousins and two family members who redefined the family name from sugar cane to include social activism and preservation. At the age of 92 Mabel began her plans for the protection of Grove Farm as a historic-site museum representing the developing sugar plantation.
“Mabel wanted to be sure her uncle’s (George Norton Wilcox) home would be preserved,” Schleck said.
Never one to sit idly by, she was diligent in her efforts. When the county planned to run a highway through the property, she met with the mayor and council to share her own plans.
“They changed the highway construction,” Schleck said. “So much of what (Mabel and Elsie) did was in order to leave a legacy to the community. Education was always a focal point of the family; they considered it the key to anyone’s future.”
“The Wilcox family was one of teaching missionaries, not preaching missionaries,” said 20-year docent Nancy Bunyan.
As the first woman senator in the territory, Elsie Wilcox was key in the creation of high schools on the Outer Islands. At the time, the only way to receive an education higher than the eighth grade was to go to Honolulu.
Often confused with Grove Farm Company, which is the land manager acquired by Stephen Case, Grove Farm Museum is the historic-site museum that was the original homestead of George Wilcox, “out of which the Grove Farm Company began,” Schleck said.
Wilcox bought Grove Farm in 1864 where two generations of Wilcox family lived for over 100 years.
“Grove Farm was a little farm in the middle of a kukui grove. Outside of it was the plantation. In 1922, having no heirs, G.N. (George Norton Wilcox’s nickname) had to do some estate planning, so he incorporated the plantation in 1922,” Schleck said. “He left lifetime use of the property to Mabel and her family, but once she passed the use of the property would go into the estate.”
Another family home restored and preserved is the Waioli Mission House in Hanalei, devoted to the interpretation of missionary life on Kaua‘i.
Besides family homes, the sisters erected monuments to family members. “Whenever a family member passed away they’d create a memorial in the form of a community-benefiting building,” Schleck said.
Among them, Wilcox Memorial Hospital (in memory of George Wilcox), Mahelona Medical Center and Waioli Mission. Samuel Mahelona Medical Center was the island’s first tuberculosis sanitarium built in memory of Mabel’s son.
“Samuel died of TB, so the grieving mother built it as a healing place for other people suffering from TB,” Schleck said.
As a nurse, Mabel opened the first public-health office on Kaua‘i.
Among the buildings included on the tour is her old office still filled with books and ledgers. All living quarters still contain original furnishings of the period, including mementos of world travel.
Farming equipment for oxen occupy the shed. Cotton kimonos hang in the closet of a camp house, and the main house boasts ‘ohi‘a floors. Columns, beams and a staircase are of koa wood.
The family left sugar in the ’70s when the government negotiated sugar farming to other countries, “undermining the sugar industry here,” Schleck said.
Mabel and brother Gaylord liked to say, “‘sugar will always take care of you,’” he continued. “But the younger generation didn’t trust it and went into development.”
Hurricanes ‘Iwa and ‘Iniki cinched the noose on the family business.
“Sugar-cane leases weren’t renewed,” Schleck said. “So that generation sold the company to Stephen Case.”
Grove Farm Company continues to share a vision of preservation by allowing Grove Farm Museum use of the locomotive round house in Puhi and monthly steam locomotive rides the second Thursday of each month. Rides are from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Call 245-3202 to make reservations for either a tour of the homestead or locomotive ride. Tour admission is $10, adults, $5 for children 5 to 12. Train rides are free of charge, but donations are accepted.
• Pam Woolway, lifestyle writer, can be reached at 245-3681, ext. 257 or pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
