History of Wailua Bridge

The first bridge built across Kaua‘i’s Wailua River — a three-span, wrought-iron, Warren truss bridge, erected between 1894 and 1895, that traversed the mouth of the river — was fabricated in 1890 by Alexander Findlay & Co. of Motherwell, Scotland and shipped to Kaua‘i in sections.

In 1919, the wrought-iron bridge was dismantled by Kaua‘i County Engineer and Road Supervisor Joseph H. Moragne and replaced by a reinforced concrete arch bridge he’d designed.

Part of the disassembled wrought-iron bridge was then used in the construction of the ‘Opaeka‘a Road Bridge, which was also designed and built by Moragne in 1919, and remains in use in Wailua Homesteads.

The third Wailua River bridge — the Wailua Cane Haul Bridge — was built to enable Ahukini Terminal and Railroad Co. to haul sugar by train from the Make‘e sugar mill in Kealia and the Lihu‘e Plantation sugar mill in Lihu‘e to the shipping terminal at Ahukini Landing, as well as pineapples from Hawaiian Canneries in Kapa‘a.

Erected in 1921, downriver of Moragne’s 1919 reinforced concrete arch bridge, it initially had one lane and a roadway length of 395 feet, supported by seven intermediate piers and two end piers.

When Lihu‘e Plantation switched from trains to cane haul trucks in the 1950s, the Wailua Cane Haul Bridge was converted to a roadway for the cane haul trucks.

Then, in the 1990s, the State Department of Transportation acquired the Wailua Cane Haul Bridge for use as a third lane over the Wailua River.  It was repaired and resurfaced in 2003, and work converting it to a two-lane bridge was completed in 2011.

The fourth Wailua River bridge is the two-lane Wailua River Highway Bridge, built in 1949 upriver of the Wailua Cane Haul Bridge and the 1919 concrete arch bridge it replaced.  

Only the abutments and parapet walls of Moragne’s 1919 bridge now remain.