The “Southern Cross” and its stopover on Kaua‘i in 1928
The first crossing of the Pacific by air was accomplished in 1928 by Australian pilot Charles Kingsford Smith, copilot Charles Ulm, navigator Harry Lyon and radio operator James Warner flying the Fokker trimotor monoplane “Southern Cross.”
Women’s Air Raid Defense veteran Anne Martha Rapozo Caires
Anne Martha Rapozo Caires (1918-1978), the daughter of Antone and Rosalia Rapozo of Kilauea, Kauai, served in the Women’s Air Raid Defense (WARD) on Kauai during World War II.
Kaua‘i-born warrior chief, Governor Kaikioewa
An alii, Kaikioewa was born in 1765 at Waimea, Kauai, but he’d moved to Hilo by 1782, the year his cousin Kamehameha I had embarked upon his conquest of Hawaii.
A brief history of Kauai’s Waita Reservoir
Waita Reservoir, with an area of 425 acres located on a site overlooking Koloa, Kauai, and bound on three sides by hills and a 28-foot-high dam on the fourth, is second in size in the State of Hawaii only to Halalii Lake on Niihau with its 841 acres of area.
Pioneer Kaua‘i sugar planter H.P. Fayé
Born and raised in Norway, H. P. (Hans Peter) Fayé (1859-1928) arrived in the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1880, and soon after leased land at Mana from his uncle, Valdemar Knudsen, and settled there.
The USS Saginaw’s rescue crew reached Kauai on Dec. 19, 1870
In March 1870, the Navy’s USS Saginaw arrived at Midway Atoll with a construction crew aboard assigned the mission of blasting, widening and deepening the channel entrance through Midway’s encircling reef.
Janet Kahaunani Bal’s reminiscences of Kauai during the 1940s and 1950s
The daughter of Jimmie and Mary Bal, Janet Kahaunani Bal Landfried was born in Lihue in 1941, raised in Kekaha during the 1940s and 1950s, and attended Waimea High and Elementary School from kindergarten through graduation in 1959.
The Hawaiian Sugar Company of Kaua‘i railroad
Hawaiian Sugar Co. (HSCo) of Makaweli, Kauai, aka Makaweli Plantation, was founded by representatives of the Scottish firm of Mirelees, Watson & Yaryan not long after the signing of the Treaty of Reciprocity of 1875 between the Hawaiian Kingdom and the United States.
H.S. Kawakami, the founder of Kauai’s Big Save Markets
Following H. S. (Harvey Saburo) Kawakami’s arrival on Kauai from Japan in Oct. 1912 to join his older brother, Fukutaro, and his father, Fukujiro, at Port Allen, Fukutaro enrolled him at Eleele School to learn English, and in Sept. 1913, Fukutaro sent H. S. to study at Mid-Pacific Institute on Oahu.
Kauai’s Kilauea Sugar Co. closed in Nov. 1971
The 11,500-acre, 94-year-old Kilauea Sugar Co. closed in Nov. 1971 after several consecutive unprofitable years of operation, and without the hope of making a profit for its parent company, C. Brewer & Co., in the future.
Historic photographs by W. J. Senda of Kauai
Unlike most of the 300 Japanese immigrants who walked off the Hong Kong Maru at Honolulu Harbor on October 23, 1906, 17-year-old W. J. (William Junokichi) Senda (1889-1984) had no job to claim at an island sugar plantation, nor were there friends and family waiting for him.
Kaua‘i’s Kilauea Point Lighthouse was dedicated on May 1, 1913
On Thursday evening, May 1, 1913, Construction Superintendent Frank C. Palmer pressed a button at the newly constructed Kilauea Point Lighthouse that resulted in the illumination, for the first time, of the lighthouse’s 250,000 candle power lamp, which immediately began flashing every 10 seconds for a distance of 21 miles.
Adena Wallis Gillin, Kamaaina resident of Mahaulepu, Kauai
Born in California, longtime Mahaulepu, Kauai resident Adena Wallis Gillin (1907-1996) arrived at Koloa, Kaua‘i in 1926 following her graduation from Pasadena High School to became the assistant of her uncle, Dr. Alfred Herbert Waterhouse, in the operation of his experimental electrical physiotherapy equipment.
The Captain Cook Monument at Waimea, Kauai was dedicated in 1928
In the afternoon of Jan. 20, 1778, Capt. James Cook’s ships, the Resolution and Discovery, dropped anchors off the mouth of the Waimea River on Kauai, and Cook, the British explorer and discoverer of the Hawaiian Islands, made for shore with a guard of 12 armed marines in 3 boats.
The Lihue Plantation Railroad was in operation from 1892 to 1960
Lihue Plantation Company was founded in 1849 as Henry A. Pierce & Co. and was in continuous operation on Kauai until it closed in 2000.
John Dominis was the husband of Queen Liliuokalani
Born at Schenectady, New York, the son of sea captain John Dominis and Mary Dominis, John Owen Dominis (1832-1891) moved from New York to Honolulu with his parents in 1837.
Eleanor Wilson Heavey, the woman in the historic picture by Ray Jerome Baker
One of the best-known photographs ever taken in Hawaii is of three young women in the employ of famed photographer Ray Jerome Baker (1880-1972), who took their picture in his Honolulu studio during World War II.
German Army reserve officer and Koloa Plantation manager Anton Cropp
Anton Cropp (1853-1913), a reserve officer in German Army, arrived in Hawaii in 1880 and within two years succeeded John N. Wright as Koloa Plantation manager.
Pirates were hanged at Waimea, Kauai in 1818
On August 17, 1818, French-born, Argentine naval officer Captain Hippolyte Bouchard (1780-1837) arrived at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii in command of the Argentine frigate “La Argentina.”
Kaua‘i businessman Dennis Esaki grew up on a farm during the 1950s
Kauai surveyor Dennis Esaki recently reminisced about growing up on his father’s farm at Aliomanu, Kauai back in the “good old days” of the 1950s.