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Kapaeloa

The literal translation for the moku (district) of Waialua is “two” (lua) “water(s)” (wai), which may be a reference to the pair of major streams that empty into its two main bays (Waialua and Kaiaka.)  An alternative interpretations of the meaning of Waialua suggest a particular lo‘i (irrigated taro patch,) a specific place called Kemo‘o and a cruel ancient chief named Waia.

Others suggest, “Waia, grandson of Wākea was said to be a cruel chief. He cared nothing of the gods or of doing good. He had men and women killed for the fun of killing them. When he saw a maiden with shapely legs, he ordered them cut off and if a man or a woman had beautiful tatooing he was put to death. … Waia lived and practised evil deeds at Waialua – as such, the place was named for him Waia-lua (Doubly disgraceful.)”  (Handy & Pukui)

“For the 28 generations from Hulihonua (the first man in the ancient Hawaiian past) to Wākea, no man was made chief over another. During the 25 generations from Wākea to Kapawa, various noted deeds are mentioned in the traditions and well-known stories.  Kapawa was the first chief to be set up as a ruling chief. This was at Waialua, Oʻahu; and from then on, the group of Hawaiian Islands became established as chief-ruled kingdoms”. (Kamakau)

Historic evidence indicates a fishing village, or a scattering of small fishing villages, extending from the west side of Waimea Bay back towards Waialua. This area along the coast and inland was known as Kāpaeloa (it’s in Waialua, and shares a boundary with Waimea ahupuaʻa that is in the moku of Koʻolauloa.)

In times past, Kāpaeloa may have been an ahupuaʻa; however, in later references (ie LCAs) Kāpaeloa is considered an ‘ili (land division smaller than an ahupua‘a) of either Kawailoa or (in the early-nineteenth century) Kamananui ahupua‘a.

The area is a relatively dry place, generally unsuitable for wet-taro cultivation, but ideal for its access to marine resources and deep-sea fisheries.  Any cultivation would have been limited to small gardens – families likely exchanged marine resources for other foodstuffs, such as taro, with farmers from nearby areas.

Here and in close proximity are four significant sites: Kūpopolo, a large heiau (temple;) Keahuohāpu’u, a fish-attracting shrine on a rocky point; Kaʻahakiʻi a tongue-shaped stone marking the ahupua‘a boundary between Waimea and Kawailoa; and Pu‘u o Mahuka Heiau at Pūpūkea.

This area, and some of the sites above are associated with Kaʻōpulupulu the last O‘ahu born Kahuna Nui (supreme spiritual leader) of the island.

In 1773, a leadership change was decided on Oʻahu where Kahahana would replace Kūmahana; this was the second chief to be elected (rather than conquest or heredity) to succeed to the leadership of Oʻahu, the first being Māʻilikūkahi who was his ancestor.  Kaʻōpulupulu was Waimea’s presiding priest and served Kahahana.

A story says Kahahana asked Kaʻōpulupulu to determine whether the gods approved of him, and whether the island of Kaua‘i would surrender if he invaded its shores. Kaʻōpulupulu requested that a temple be built where he could “speak to the great chief Kekaulike (of Kaua‘i) through the thoughts of the great akua Mahuka.”

At first, Heiau Kūpopolo was built on the beach of Waimea Bay; however, when Kaʻōpulupulu used it, he received no answer from Kaua‘i. It was thought the temple was in the wrong location.

Off shore of this area is Wānanapaoa, a small group of islets.  Several believe they were so named (Wānanapaoa literally translates to “unsuccessful prophecy”) because Kūpopolo heiau there did not live up to its intended function.

Because the kahuna believed that “thoughts are little gods, or kupua, that travel in space, above the earth … they fly freely as soaring birds,” he had another heiau, Puʻu O Mahuka built high on the cliffs. From there, Kaʻōpulupulu sent out thought waves, and the answer quickly returned – Kaua‘i wished for peace.  (Johnson; OHA)

“At that time, Kahekili was plotting for the downfall of Kahahana and the seizure of Oʻahu and Molokaʻi, and the queen of Kauaʻi was disposed to assist him in these enterprises.”  (Kalākaua)

Kahekili deceived Kahahana by having him believe Kaʻōpulupulu had offered the government and throne of Oʻahu to him (Kahekili), but that out of affection for his nephew he had refused; and he intimated strongly that Kaʻōpulupulu was a traitor to Kahahana.

Kahahana believed the falsehoods and it subsequently caused friction between Kahahana and Kaʻōpulupulu and the Oʻahu King turned a deaf ear to his kahuna’s advice and by the later part of 1782 or beginning of 1783, he arranged to have Kaʻōpulupulu killed.

Kahahana, who dispatched his best runners and trusted warriors to kill Kaʻōpulupulu and his son, Kahulupue … On the eve of the expected arrival of the messengers of death, Kaʻōpulupulu warned his son of their doom, saying: “I see in the sudden rise of dust that death will be here anon.”…Hardly had he given utterance to those words, when father and son were dragged out and speared.

Weakened, Kaʻōpulupulu commanded his wounded son, who had gained a point where a few steps would have placed him at the mercy of the angry sea: “E nui ke aho e kuʻu keiki a pa ke kino I ka ili kai a na ke kai ka ua ʻāina la” – Spend not your strength my son until your body strikes the surface of the ocean, for the land belongs to the sea.” This cryptic message culminated in the invasion of Oʻahu by Kahekili, aliʻi nui of Maui.  (Nui; Cultural Surveys)

Back to the sites of Kāpaeloa, Keahuohāpuʻu is believed to be either a koʻa (although fishing koʻa are characterized with coral, this one does not have coral in its construction) or a kūʻula associated with the fish (or shark) god Kāneʻaukai.  (The hāpuʻu is a kind of grouper fish.)

Kaʻahakiʻi was a “tongue-shaped stones, with only the tip protruding above the ground.”  It could still be seen in 1930s; when road construction occurred here, the workers worked abound the stone.

Another stone “in the vicinity” was blasted by railroad builders “apparently causing the death of three workmen.” A local Hawaiian referred to this stone as a kupua, “which he defined as a stone belonging to a particular region”.  (McAllister; Cultural Surveys)

During the Māhele in 1848, nearly the entire ahupua‘a of Kawailoa was awarded to Victoria Kamāmalu (LCA 7713.)  During the second half of the nineteenth century, following the death of Kamāmalu in 1866, Kawailoa Ahupuaʻa was passed on to successive members of the aliʻi (chiefs) eventually to Bishop Estate.

Today, Kūpopolo Heiau is used as an outdoor classroom for archaeological field training for the North Shore Field School (a cooperative effort of Kamehameha Schools and UH.)  Students and community volunteers learn how to identify, document and investigate archaeological artifacts, features and other cultural landscapes.  (Lots of information here from Cultural Surveys)

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First Flight to Hawai‘i

Lieutenant Lester J Maitland (pilot) and Lieutenant Albert F Hegenberger (navigator) were selected to fulfill the Army’s dreams to successfully cross the Pacific Ocean to Hawai‘i.

Since 1919, Hegenberger tested every known navigation instrument and method, including regular “blind” flying tests and engineering of the equipment’s development.  He completed a course of instruction in navigation at the Navy’s school at Pensacola in February, 1920.

Lieutenant Hegenberger was given responsibility to prepare the plane, including installation of special equipment, final arrangements of fuel system, engines, pumps and airborne facilities, among other requirements.

Because the navigator had to function as radio operator and pilot as well, a special passageway was provided between the front cockpit and the navigator’s cabin in the rear, necessitating the removal of one fuel tank.

Maitland and Hegenberger denied any interest in racing, prizes or “first” distinction.  They felt the interest to link up Hawai‘i and the mainland by air was purely for the advancement of aviation, stating this flight would be a test of the navigation equipment Hegenberger and his Army unit had been developing for years.

Another stated objective of the long-range flight was to test the performance of the new radio beacon installed by the Army Signal Corps on the island of Maui and reaching to San Francisco.

Finally, it was felt that valuable data could be obtained for use in the establishment of regular commercial airline service over the route.  Encouraging commercial aviation by the use of airways was the job of the military, they said; this flight fell in the Army’s peacetime mission.

Shortly after 7 am on June 28, 1927, the Army pair shook hands with their crews and climbed into positions in the airplane.  Left behind were their parachutes, mandatory in the Army since 1922; they would be of little use in open seas.

At the 4,600-foot mark, and a speed of 93 mph, the huge plane lifted off the ground.  At the 2,000 foot altitude, Maitland and Hegenberger passed over the Golden Gate then headed on the first course of the Great Circle to Maui, where the radio beacon was to tie in with the station in San Francisco.

For the first 500-miles they encountered strong crosswinds and after that a very strong tailwind which increased their airspeed to 108-mph.  They flew close to the sea during daylight hours at an altitude of 300 feet.

They flew without incident until about half-way, at this point relaxing sufficiently to discover hunger pangs. Searching for food that was supposed to have been stowed aboard for them, none could be found by either flyer.

At 3:20 am, they saw the lighthouse on Kauai five degrees to the left of the plane’s nose.  When they reached the shoreline, the island’s contour became familiar – one they knew well from past inter-island flights.

Oʻahu was 75-miles from Kauai; daybreak would not occur for about another hour.  Maitland and Hegenberger chose not to jeopardize a successful completion to their flight by approaching mountainous Oʻahu in heavy clouds, rain and total darkness. They decided to circle Kauai until daybreak, slowing down to 65-mph.

Crossing the channel to Oʻahu at 750-feet, just below an unbroken cloud layer, their speed was boosted to 115-mph and soon they found themselves 500-feet over Schofield Barracks. Below them at Wheeler Field were thousands of people.

Maitland circled the field once for the anxious spectators then came to a landing at 6:29 am, June 29, 1927, 2,425-miles having been flown from California to Kauai in 23 hours.  It was a total of 25-hours and 49-minutes when the three-engine plane touched down at Wheeler.

The flight was an unprecedented success.

The feat was hailed by the War Department and the press.  The Honorable F Trubee Davison, Assistant Secretary of War, stated, “a new vista of communication between America and its overseas positions” had been opened by the Army, underscoring the progress made in aerial navigation.  He went on, “The flight is unquestioningly one of the greatest of aerial accomplishments ever made.”

Davison was “particularly pleased that two Army Air Corps officers, operating an Army plane built for no other purpose than Regular Army use, were the first to negotiate the flight to Hawai‘i.”  (Lots of info and images here from hawaii-gov.)

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Coral Gardens

When I was growing up, we called them the ‘mud flats’ – mauka runoff covered the fringe reefs in Kāneʻohe Bay.  That’s not how it used to be …

The early twentieth century was a time when some parts of Kāneʻohe Bay were clear and clean with healthy coral reefs and a host of colorful fishes still apparent.  The southern region near Kāneʻohe town became known for its ‘coral gardens.’

Around 1911, the Coral Gardens Hotel was built in the vicinity of what is now Makani Kai Marina.  This resort’s featured attraction was a glass-bottom boat tour of the nearby reefs.

A brochure printed in 1919 described the underwater scenery: “Only those who have seen the Gardens can appreciate the marvelous beauty of their marine growth and the variety of undersea life they hold.”

“Looking through the glass-bottom boat, one sees a natural aquarium of vast extent, set in an undersea forest of strange trees and crags, valleys and Hills.”

These enthusiastic remarks were written by then-territorial governor CJ McCarthy.  They may be the first promotion of an underwater tourist attraction in Hawai‘i.

The Coral Gardens Hotel, once located above the mouth of Kea‘ahala Stream, operated glass bottom boats which visited the famed ‘coral gardens’ of south Kāneʻohe Bay. The coral bottom was once regarded as among the most beautiful in Hawai’i.  (Hawai‘i Coral Reef Inventory)

Arthur Loring MacKaye, the eldest son of the playwright/actor James Steele MacKaye, was the proprietor of the Coral Gardens.  He was born in New York in 1863 and was a newspaper man in New York and Los Angeles.  He came to Hawaii in 1910 and was the city editor for the Pacific Commercial Advertiser. (Mid-Pacific Magazine)

MacKaye wrote in the February 1916 issue of Mid-Pacific Magazine, “One of the most fascinating sights on the Island of Oahu, and within twelve miles of the Honolulu post office, over the Pali, are the Coral Gardens of Kaneohe Bay.”

“Here can be viewed in comfort through the glass bottom boats which ply from the Coral Garden Hotel, a strange and wonderful world, one which is a revelation to those who see it with its …”

“… strange marine life, its ‘painted’ fishes, curious coral formations, beautiful sea plants and ferns, fantastic water-snakes, so-called, of varied hues, and combination vistas of corrugated mountains and a typical South Sea Island with its palm-fringed sandy beach.”

“Since last winter over two thousand visitors, the majority of them tourists, have visited the Coral Gardens and have departed enthusiastic over the wonders of the under-water world seen there.”

“Many of these tourists have visited the marine gardens of Catalina Island, off the coast of Southern California, also the marine gardens of Bermuda and the West Indies, yet all have declared that nowhere else have they seen such a varied and beautiful scene of color and marine life as at the Coral Gardens of Kaneohe Bay.”

“[W]e board the big glass-bottomed boat in command of the local Admiral, who will pilot us to the beauty spots along the coral reefs.”

“Away we go, headed for Moku o Loe, (Coconut Island), which has been made famous by photographers and color artists, views of the island on glass being on exhibition at the San Francisco Exposition where they have attracted all art-lovers at the Hawaiian Building.”

“Within a few minutes the boat glides over the first reef, but this is a dead reef and illustrates the manner in which land is built up upon the coral reefs of the Pacific; here all is dark-colored silt with patches of coarse seaweeds and pieces of dirty coral.”

“A moment later we glide over another deep channel, for Kaneohe Bay is full of these channels radiating between the reefs, in fact the word ‘Kaneohe’ in ancient Hawaiian means ‘deep, still channels.’”

“From this spot is secured a wonderful view of the Koolau Mountains with their corrugated sides, which lift their heads to the clouds with their emerald green peaks shining in the morning sun, or standing out like bluish green silhouettes in the late afternoon, or when the setting sun crowns them with halos of rose flames. It is a sight to be remembered.”

“And here we come to the second reef, one which is partly dead on one side, but alive on the other, showing as we cross it in water only two or three feet deep, the changes in a coral reef-top from muddy silt to white coral sand, interspersed with crimson sponges and green seaweeds.”

“As we pass over the outer rim of this reef we take a peek through the covered plate-glass box which runs through the center of the boat.”

“It gives you an eerie sensation as we pass from the shallow reef into water fifty feet deep; and as the boat glides out you catch a glimpse of a coral precipice along the steep sides of which strange fish are swimming, and a moment later the boat seems to be floating in space of a bright green hue.”

“And then the fish! My, what a lot! Swarms of manini, yellowish green with vertical black stripes; kikakapus, yellow with black spots on their tail and a black rim around their heads; the aawa, ohu, pilani, and many other “painted” varieties.”

“But it is the rainbow fish which calls forth enthusiasm.  This is a rare species which has never been seen in the aquarium, nor is there a specimen in the Bishop museum.”

MacKaye noted, “Probably no other one spot in the Territory of Hawaii can show such a wonderful variety of coral as the waters of Kaneohe Bay and the surrounding reefs on Windward Oahu.”

“Considerably over one hundred varieties of corals are known to exist in Kaneohe Bay, where lie the famous Coral Gardens, the sheltered formation of the encircling shores being advantageous to the propagation of nearly all the species inhabiting the Hawaiian waters.”

The original Coral Gardens resort and its tours persisted until shortly before World War II.  Then more than a decade of massive dredging and removal of whole reefs for primarily military purposes obliterated the coral gardens in the calm, sheltered southern bay.

Prior to 1930, the coral reefs of Kāneʻohe Bay were still in excellent condition. Then, the area of the south basin was subsequently impacted by dredging, sedimentation and sewage discharge.

Much of the dredged reef mass, at least 15 million cubic yards, went into landfill and runway construction at the Marine base on Mokapu Peninsula. Many of the south bay’s pedestal-formed patch reefs were blasted apart and the rubble dredged up to clear landing zones for seaplanes. (Culliney, Islands in a Far Sea)

After a lot of hard work by a lot of people over a long time, Kāneʻohe Bay is recovering; while not yet back to being a ‘coral garden,’ invasive algae has literally been sucked off the coral, coral is recolonizing and the Bay and reefs are recovering.

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Plymouth Colony Absorbed Into Province of Massachusetts Bay

Massachusetts takes its name from the Massachusett tribe of Native Americans, who lived in the Great Blue Hill region, south of Boston. The Indian term is roughly translated as “at or about the Great Hill”.

There are, however, a number of interpretations of the exact meaning of the word. The Jesuit missionary Father Rasles thought that it came from the word Messatossec, “Great-Hills-Mouth”: “mess” (mass) meaning “great”; “atsco” (as chu or wad chu) meaning “hill”; and sec (sac or saco) meaning “mouth”.

The Reverend John Cotton used another variation: “mos” and “wetuset”, meaning “Indian arrowhead”, descriptive of the Native Americans’ hill home. Another explanation is that the word comes from “massa” meaning “great” and “wachusett”, “mountain-place”.  (Secretary of the Commonwealth)

Massachusetts Bay Colony

While it is well known that the Massachusetts Bay Company, under the leadership of John Winthrop, ultimately settled Massachusetts Bay in 1630, it is less well understood that the Massachusetts Bay Company’s claim on New England was preceded by those of two other joint stock companies.

The first of these belonged to an association of “Adventurers” known as the Dorchester Company, organized by the Anglican minister John White. Although it succeeded in launching a settlement on Cape Ann in 1623, the Dorchester Company went out of existence in 1626.

In 1627, the Council for New England issued a land grant to a new group of investors, including a few from the Dorchester Company, to establish a for-profit enterprise, “The New England Company for a Plantation in Massachusetts Bay” (better known as the New England Company), led by John Endecott.

Endecott would ultimately found the town of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1628.  Endecott’s shares and those of fifty-six other New England Company investors would ultimately be absorbed into those of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629. (Genealogical-com)

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was a colony located near modern-day Boston and Salem Massachusetts.  It  was the first English chartered colony whose board of governors does not reside in England, thus paving the way for permanent settlement. (Native Philanthropy)

The Puritans used the royal charter establishing the Massachusetts Bay Company to create a government in which “freemen” – white males who owned property and paid taxes and thus could take on the responsibility of governing – elected a governor and a single legislative body called the Great and General Court, made up of assistants and deputies.

In April of 1630, the Puritans, led by one of the company’s stockholders, John Winthrop, left their homes in Boston, England and gathered at a dock in Southampton to set sail for the New World.

The fleet of 11 ships, now known as the Winthrop fleet, set sail and finally reached the shores of Massachusetts on June 12 and landed at Salem.

The Puritans established a theocratic government with the franchise limited to church members.  Bending the charter to their own purposes, the Puritans transformed the company into a religious commonwealth.

Their ambition had been to establish an ideal Christian community — a “city on a hill,” as Winthrop called it — with the eyes of England and the entire world on it. Winthrop was reelected governor, and a theocracy was in fact established.

In May 1631 the Puritan leaders agreed to recognize only church members as freemen (those entitled to vote and hold office). The company’s officers became the colony’s magistrates. The ministers of the church defined orthodoxy, and the colony’s magistrates enforced it. Dissenters were suppressed or banished.

Conflicts arose over the arbitrariness of the assistants, and in 1641 the legislature created the Body of Liberties. This document was a statement of principles for governance that protected individual liberties and was the basis for the guarantees later expressed in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

Early challenges to the charter were averted by the outbreak of the English Civil War in the 1640s; for about 50 years, with little interference from England, the Massachusetts Bay Colony developed into a Puritan commonwealth.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony flourished with literacy, schools, town meetings, longer lives, clean drinking water, a cool climate, and a variety of crops. Though the Puritan faith eventually waned, the Massachusetts Bay Colony thrived and was a strong start for the New World.

In 1684, however, the government of Charles II revoked the company’s charter. The colony was merged briefly into the extensive but short-lived (1686–88) Dominion of New England, which included New Hampshire and New Jersey and the colonies lying between them.  (Oscar Zeichner)

Plymouth Colony

On September 6, 1620 (Old Style; September 16, New Style), the Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England, and headed for America.

After 65 days at sea, the Mayflower dropped anchor near present-day Provincetown on November 11 (OS; November, 21, 1620, NS), and 41 male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement to enact “just and equal laws for the general good of the colony.”

The colonists who traveled to the New World on the Mayflower were a small group of Separatists who had fled to Holland from England to practice their religion without official interference. Economic hardship and a desire to establish an identity free of Dutch influence prompted them to seek out America.   Most of the Separatists had been living in exile in Holland for ten years before sailing for America, and the rest of the passengers were drawn from the greater London area.

The area around Plymouth and Cape Cod, settled by the Pilgrims, was known as Plymouth colony, or the Old Colony.  By the mid-1640s its population numbered about 3,000 people.

The Pilgrims were never granted a royal charter; their government was based on the Mayflower Compact. The compact was hardly democratic, since it called for rule by the elite, but it established an elective system and a basis for limited consent of the governed as the source of authority. The Old Colony was rapidly overshadowed by its Puritan neighbor to the north, the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Massachusetts Becomes a Royal Province in 1691

After losing its charter in 1684, Massachusetts continued to oppose the will of the Crown.  The Puritan government often operated as an independent state, to the point of minting its own money and even conducting its own foreign affairs.

In 1686, the British king canceled the Massachusetts charter that made it an independent colony.

When James II fled in 1688, the Puritans failed in their attempt to revive the Massachusetts Bay Company, and Massachusetts, in 1691, became a Royal Province under a Governor appointed by the Crown. 

To let more control over trade with the colonies, the King combined British colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth and Maine and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard into a single territory governed from England in 1691.  The religious laws instituted by the Massachusetts Bay Company were largely repealed. 

In this new Massachusetts, the franchise was given only to those who owned property or paid taxes. Continued lack of interference from Great Britain allowed the colonists to gain a tradition of self-reliance and self-government. (Maine remained a part of Massachusetts until 1820, when it was established as a separate state.)

The Massachusetts Charter of 1691 was a charter that formally established the Province of Massachusetts Bay.  The charter provided for the Governor’s appointment by the Crown rather than local election, and at the same time broadened the Governor’s powers.

Two legislative houses were permitted, however, and the requirement that every voter must be a church member was abolished.

The new restrictions incidental to the status of a Royal Province, applied in Massachusetts and elsewhere, provoked the series of controversies that culminated in the Revolutionary War.   During the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, Massachusetts grew in population and in maritime trade.

These were the years of the so-called Second Hundred Years’ War between France and England. In these wars, 1688-1760, Massachusetts played an important part. Its crowning feat was the capture in 1745 of the fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island (NS), a fortress so strong it was known as the Gibraltar of America. At the same time, Massachusetts’ maritime trade, especially with Caribbean ports, rose to the point that Boston was known as “The Mart (or market town) of the West Indies”. (Mass Facts, Secretary of the Commonwealth)

Click the following link to a general summary about Plymouth Colony Absorbed Into Province of Massachusetts Bay:

Click to access Plymouth-Colony-Absorbed-Into-Province-of-Massachusetts-Bay.pdf

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Dole Came to Hawai‘i to Grow Coffee

The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaiʻi.

Don Francisco de Paula y Marin recorded in his journal, dated January 21, 1813, that he had planted coffee seedlings on the island of Oʻahu.  The first commercial coffee plantation was started in Kōloa, Kauai, in 1836.

Coffee was planted in Mānoa Valley in the vicinity of the present UH-Mānoa campus; from a small field, trees were introduced to other areas of O‘ahu and neighbor islands.

John Wilkinson, a British agriculturist, obtained coffee seedlings from Brazil. These plants were brought to Oʻahu in 1825 board the HMS Blonde (the ship also brought back the bodies of Liholiho and Kamāmalu who had died in England) and planted in Mānoa Valley at the estate of Chief Boki, the island’s governor.

In 1828, American missionary Samuel Ruggles took cuttings from Mānoa and brought them to Kona.   Henry Nicholas Greenwell grew and marketed coffee and is recognized for putting “Kona Coffee” on the world markets.

At Weltausstellung 1873 Wien (World Exhibition in Vienna, Austria (1873,)) Greenwell was awarded a “Recognition Diploma” for his Kona Coffee.  Greenwell descendants continue the family’s coffee-growing tradition in Kona. (Greenwell Farms) 

Writer Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) seemed to concur with this when he noted in his Letters from Hawaiʻi, “The ride through the district of Kona to Kealakekua Bay took us through the famous coffee and orange section. I think the Kona coffee has a richer flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and call it what you please.”

Hermann Widemann introduced the ‘Guatemalan’ variety (known as ‘Kona typica’) to Hawaiʻi in 1892. He gave seeds to John Horner, who planted an orchard of 800 trees in Hāmākua, comparing 400 trees of this new variety with 400 of the then-current variety known as ‘kanaka koppe,’ the so-called ‘Hawaiian coffee’, probably from 30 plants brought from Brazil by Wilkinson.  (CTAHR)

“’Coffee-trees are often planted with a crowbar,’ it is said. Strange as this may seem, it is nevertheless true. A hole is drilled through the rock, or lavacrust, and the soil thus reached; the tree, a small twig dug up from the forest, is planted in this hole, and it grows, thrives, and yields fruit abundantly.”  (Musick, 1898)

In 1892 it was estimated there were probably 1,000-acres in old coffee throughout North and South Kona; 150-acres new set out by the two companies then under way there, with expectation of setting out fifty more; 170-acres in the Hāmākua and Hilo districts and about 100 in Puna.  (Thrum)

“Hardly a mail arrives from abroad but brings further enquiry for coffee lands and information as to area; how obtainable; situation; prices, etc., and the usual multitudinous questions pertaining thereto, all of which gives evidence of the readiness of foreign capital to come in and push forward the reviving industry with vigor.”  (Thrum, 1892)

In 1893, Joe Marsden, agricultural commissioner of the recently inaugurated revolutionary government of Hawaii, sent out some examples of promotion literature which were rosy beyond the wildest dreams of a Los Angeles publicity man.

The material related especially to coffee and back in Boston, James D Dole  (who graduated in 1899 in agriculture at Harvard’s Bussey Institute (now the Arnold Arboretum)) read the publicity and made up his mind that Hawaii and coffee offered the greatest possible attraction for him.

Arriving in Honolulu, he found that the coffee business left much to be desired. His capital was limited and learning that a small homestead near Wahiawa had relinquished his land, went out to look over the prospect. (Heenan, Canning Age)

“Following my inclination toward an agricultural pursuit and the lure of Hawaii, then recently annexed to the United States, I landed in Honolulu on November 16, 1899; and within two weeks found the town quarantined for six months by an outbreak of bubonic plague.”

“During that winter I saw the fire department, with the timely aid of a stiff trade-wind, burn down all of Chinatown (the intention having been to disinfect in this thorough manner only one or two blocks).”

“In July, I bought a government homestead of sixty-four acres, twenty-three miles from Honolulu, and on August 1, 1900, I took up my residence thereon as a farmer – unquestionably of the ‘dirt” variety.”  (Dole, Harvard)’

At the time coffee turned out not to be a viable crop, so he switched to pineapples.  He incorporated Hawaiian Pineapple Company on December 4, 1901.

Exporting fresh pineapples to the continental United States resulted in a high level of wastage in the era before modern refrigerated sea and air transportation. So Dole decided to process the fruit before it was exported.

At the time fruit was often preserved in glass containers and one of his fellow pineapple growers at the settlement adopted this method of preserving his fruit. However, Dole chose to preserve his fruit in tin cans.  This proved to be a wise choice. (Hawkins)

In the 1930s Dole went into business with Castle & Cooke as principal shareholders in Hawaiian Pineapple Company and beginning in 1933 the Dole name was affixed to the company’s products. (Dole)

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