General | Page 158 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

November 2, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pineapple Pier

Although sugarcane was ‘king’ in Hawai‘i, untilled government land was in pasture rather than sugarcane because it was too dry for unirrigated sugarcane and the elevation was too high for irrigated cane.

Several events occurred in 1898 that facilitated the development of the new pineapple canning industry. First, the annexation of Hawaii in that year resulted in the revocation of the 35% duty on Hawaiian canned pineapple.

Second, the Republic of Hawaii legislature passed a law that made some 1,300-acres of government land near Wahiawa available for homesteading once a pasture lease expired (13 southern California families came to Wahiawa to homestead the land made available under the new law.)

These early migrants and James Dole, who arrived in 1899, formed the nucleus of what would eventually become the largest pineapple industry in the world. (Bartholomew et al)

Homesteaders cleared land, built homes, and at first planted food and fodder crops. Byron O. Clark had obtained a small pineapple farm planted with ‘Smooth Cayenne’ plants near Pearl City in 1898 before the prospective homesteaders had left California.

Clark’s farm provided the first pineapple plants grown on the homesteaded lands near Wahiawa and they grew so well that other homesteaders followed suit. James Dole established the Hawaiian Pineapple Company in 1901 and is “usually considered to have produced the first commercial pack of 1,893 cases of canned pineapple in 1903”.

The pineapple plantation concept quickly spread to Kauai and Maui, perhaps because the already well-established sugar industry provided the near-ideal plantation model for those to whom it was not initially obvious. (Bartholomew et al)

In the early 1900s, to help with the burgeoning plantation population, government lands were auctioned off as town lots in Kapa‘a.

The first pineapple company on the island of Kauai was established in 1906. In 1913, Hawaiian Canneries Company, Ltd opened in Kapa‘a at the site now occupied by Pono Kai Resort. Through the Hawaiian Organic Act, Hawaiian Canneries purchased land they were leasing, approximately 8.75 acres, in 1923.

A 1923 sketch of the cannery shows only four structures, one very large structure assumed to be the actual cannery and three small structures makai of the cannery. (Bartholomew etal)

On August 21, 1929, a US trademark registration was filed for ‘Pono’ by Hawaiian Canneries. The description provided to the trademark for Pono is ‘canned sliced and crushed pineapple and pineapple juice used for food-flavoring purposes’. (Trademarkia)

By 1956, the cannery was producing 1.5 million cases of pineapple. By 1960, 3,400 acres were in pineapple and there were 250 full time employees and 1,000 seasonal employees. (Exploration)

Until the 1960s, the Hawaiian Canneries canning plant used to produce canned sliced and crushed pineapple and pineapple juice used for food-flavoring purposes.

Factory by-products – the crowns & skins from the processed pineapples – were loaded onto train carts and hauled up the coast to a pier. The pineapple rubbish was then dumped into the ocean from the end of the pier. (Kauai Path)

As canned pineapple from other countries began filling the market, Hawaiian canneries began to close and plantations, once located on Maui, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, and Kauai, began to shrink.

In 1962, Hawaiian Canneries went out of business due to foreign competition. (Exploration) Other smaller Kauai and Maui pineapple companies closed in the late-1960s.

In 1969, Hawaiian Fruit Packers (which was formed in 1937 by the reorganization of a company initially started by a group of ethnic Japanese growers) on Kauai, the last cannery remaining there, announced plans to cease planting. The cannery was closed in Oct. 1973. (Bartholomew etal)

Del Monte cannery closed in 1985, and Dole cannery in Iwilei closed in 1991. The Kahului cannery of Maui Land and Pineapple Company was the last remaining pineapple cannery in Hawai‘i. During the end of the 1990s and into the 21st century the value of fresh Hawaiian pineapple overtook the value of canned Hawaiian pineapple.

The Hawaiian pineapple industry has gone from its early days as a primarily fresh product, through most of the 20th century as principally a canned product and a major supplier of the worlds canned pineapple market, to the 21st century when it is once again grown mostly for fresh consumption. (HAER)

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Pineapple Dump Pier

Pono Pineapple

Pono – Hawaiian Canneries Company, Ltd

Hawaiian_Canneries (Kapaa)-Sanborn Fire Map

Sugar_Plantation-Fire_maps-Index-Kauai-Oahu-Hawaiian Canneries Company, Ltd-noted

November 1, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Islands in 1856

“On Owhyhee, two enormous mountains rise to 14,000 feet above the level of the sea, and rest crowned with perpetual snow. Many craters of extinct volcanoes, and extensive plains covered with the rude debris of earlier or later eruptions, exist everywhere; and Kilauea, on the mountain of Mouna Kea, is the largest active volcano in the known world.”

“In a country thus formed, and, doubtless, at a date comparatively so recent, we cannot be surprised that no metals have been found, and no minerals save the varieties of the lava, and some limestone which has been lately discovered lying in a remarkable and raised bed at Kahuku, in the island of Woahoo.”

“In this island there is also a salt-lake, a little elevated above the surface of the sea. Soils formed of such materials as those which thus compose the entire bed of the islands, could not be expected to be very fertile, save upon some of the lower or little elevated lands, and in the valleys long formed in situations exposed to the winter rains.”

“The climate generally of the islands is remarkable for its salubrity and its even temperature. Near the sea, the highest elevation of the thermometer is 86° Fahrenheit, and the lowest 62°. The greatest heat occurs during the month of July, and the least in January.”

“Thus the extreme range during the year, does not exceed 24°, but the variation is rarely more than 8°. The inhabitants may, however, by ascending to the higher lands, live in any temperature between that of these tropical latitudes and that of the frigid zone.”

“But, notwithstanding the general healthiness of the climate, at the time that the trade-winds are irregular, which happens during the winter months …”

“… when the wind is commonly from the south, rains and storms occur, attended by diseases not differing much from those which prevail in the southern parts of Europe, at the same season — such as headaches, rheumatism, and others, arising from imprudent exposure to the night air, in damp and chilly weather.”

“According to the reports of naturalists who have visited the islands, the spontaneous productions of their soil are much more varied than the evidently recent formation of the group would lead us to expect. It will suffice to mention, that those of the family of Rubiaceae, Con tor tee, and Urticae, predominate.”

“From the last of these, as well as from the Broussonetia papyrifera, or the paper mulberry, are made cordage and cloths. The acacia also abounds in the mountain districts, and is employed by the natives in the construction of their canoes.”

“The sandal-wood was also once very abundant, and lately afforded an article of commerce with the Chinese, by whom it is chiefly used for cabinet purposes. It is now, however, save some young, and, for the present, useless trees, quite destroyed.”

“The more familiar plants and useful productions for domestic purposes are, the banana-tree, the sugar-cane, the yam, the bread-fruit, and the taro-root (Arum esculentum), all of which are indigenous.”

“Such were these islands after they first raised their towering heads above the waters of the mighty ocean which surrounds them, and such the earliest productions of the vegetable world which sprung from the soil first formed.”

“Several important plants have been lately introduced, such as the coffee, cotton, rice, tobacco, the melon and water-melon, indigo, and even the vine, of which, however, though it flourishes in the mountain districts, little use is likely to be made, on account of the necessity of discouraging the growth of everything from which alcohol may be distilled.”

“Several of our ordinary vegetables have also been introduced with success, as well as some of the fruits of the tropical and temperate latitudes which were not indigenous, such as pine-apples, oranges, grapes, peaches, figs, tamarinds, and guavas. The bread-corns will also flourish on the higher lands.”

“With respect to the animal kingdom, it seems that at the discovery of the islands nothing was observed save hogs and dogs, the importation, without doubt, of the first inhabitants, and such of Nature’s earlier productions as may be considered habitants rather of the sea than of the land …”

“… but all our domestic animals, including such as we use for food, for beasts of burden, and for companions of our sports, have been since introduced.” (All here is from Hill.)

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Hawaiian Islands from Hill-1856

October 31, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Canuck

Canuck. A Canadian, specifically, a French Canadian.

One of the earliest uses of the word ‘Canuck’ in print (although there it was spelled as ‘Kanuk’) appears in ‘From Notes Upon Canada and the United States’ by Henry Cook Todd and published around 1835:

“Canadians are somewhat jealous of the Americans; that they are secretly manoeuvering, not exactly with the inoffensive good humor of a much respected yeoman of England, in whose sequestered dwelling I some time resided, who was fond of pozing the learned with …”

“Can you spell bullock in two letters (or) but rather after the inordinate example of Ahab of old, so pithily recorded by the sacred historian. Jonathan distinguishes a Dutch or French Canadian, by the term Kanuk. ‘Jonathan distinguishes a Dutch or French Canadian, by the term Kanuk.’”

Later (1855), Walt Whitman wrote the poem ‘Leaves of Grass’ and referenced the Kanuck – again, with a ‘K’ …

“A child said What is the grass? …
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition
out of hopeful green stuff woven. …
Or I guess the grass is itself a child …
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike
in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff
I give them the same, I receive them the same.

“The origin of Canuck is curiously uncertain. On the face of it, the word would appear to derive from the first syllable of Canada. Other guesses have been made, however …”

“… e.g., that it comes from Johnny Canuck, a cartoon character of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, similar to John Bull and Uncle Sam, that it comes from Connaught, originally used by French Canadians to refer to Irish immigrants …”

“… and that it is a variant of the Hawaiian kanaka, man, brought by whalers back to New England, whose residents then applied the term to their neighbors to the North.”

“The last theory, as farfetched as it might seem, is reinforced by the earliest known spelling of the word: Kanuk (noted in 1835 above, and in Walt Whitman’s poem (referring to all Canadians, not just those of French extraction)).” (Rawson)

Hawaiians in the northwest and reference to ‘kanaka’ outside the islands started shortly after ‘contact.’ Within ten years after Captain Cook’s 1778 contact with Hawai‘i, the islands became a favorite port of call in the trade with China. The fur traders and merchant ships crossing the Pacific needed to replenish food supplies and water.

The maritime fur trade focused on acquiring furs of sea otters, seals and other animals from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States.

Needing supplies in their journey, the traders soon realized they could economically barter for provisions in Hawai‘i; a triangular trade network emerged linking the Pacific Northwest coast, China and the Hawaiian Islands to Britain and the United States (especially New England).

As early as 1811, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) had already hired twelve Hawaiians on three year contracts to work for them in the Pacific Northwest. By 1824, HBC employed thirty-five Hawaiians west of the Rocky Mountains.

The number of Hawaiians working as contract laborers for the Hudson’s Bay Company steadily grew. The large number of Hawaiian workers in the village at Fort Vancouver led to the name “Kanaka Town” in the early 1850s.

Again, it is not clear if Canuck is any form of derivation of Kanaka (man), but the Hawaiians were there, and the Kanaka name was used in other references.

Canuck

October 30, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Looking Into The Past

It looks like Kalākaua’s vision is becoming a reality …

Kalākaua’s interest in modern astronomy is evidenced by his support for an astronomical expedition to Hawaiʻi in 1874 that came from England to observe a transit of Venus (a passage of Venus in front of the Sun – used to measure an ‘astronomical unit,’ the distance between the Earth and Sun.)

The King allowed the British Royal Society’s expedition a suitable piece of open land for their viewing area; it was not far from Honolulu’s waterfront in a district called Apua (mauka of today’s Waterfront Plaza.)

Kalākaua addressed those astronomers in 1874 stating, “It will afford me unfeigned satisfaction if my kingdom can add its quota toward the successful accomplishment of the most important astronomical observation of the present century and assist …”

“… however humbly, the enlightened nations of the earth in these costly enterprises to establish the basis of astronomical distance.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 19, 1874)

Kalākaua reinforced his positive feelings toward modern astronomy – and noted the importance of scientific learning versus the financial aspect of it. On November 22, 1880, King Kalākaua wrote to Captain RS Floyd noting his interest in telescopes and astronomy:

“I must thank you sincerely for the pamphlet you sent me of the ‘Lick Observatory Trust.’ Something of this kind is needed here very much but we have so few people who take interest in scientific matters. Everybody is bent upon making money on sugar and the all might dollar.” (King Kalākaua)

In Kalākaua’s time they were measuring an astronomical unit, using now-considered rudimentary equipment; today’s cutting-edge telescopes are making discoveries about new planets, interacting galaxies and seeing stars at the edge of the observable Universe.

Astronomy looks into the distant past.

“Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to us (other than the Sun), is about 4 light-years away. This means that the light we see from it now left the star about 4 years ago.”

“(T)he light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes to reach us here on Earth, so when you look up at the Sun, you see it as it was 8 minutes ago (but don’t look at the Sun) … The speed of light is about a foot per nanosecond (billionth of a second)”. (Masters)

It wasn’t until nearly a century after Hawaiʻi’s participation in the first Transit of Venus that a high elevation observatory was constructed in Hawaiʻi – in 1964, a NASA-funded 12.5-inch telescope was installed on Puʻu Poliahu to see if Mauna Kea provide the right observation conditions.

Dr. Gerard Kuiper’s team began “seeing” studies. Kuiper concluded that “The mountaintop is probably the best site in the world – I repeat – in the world – from which to study the moon, the planets, and stars.” (Ironwood Observatory Research)

At the close of the decade Mauna Kea saw the construction of a 0.6-meter (24-inch) (1968) and 2.2-meter (88-inch) (1970) telescopes, provided to University of Hawaiʻi by the US Air Force and NASA.

Now, Hawai‘i has another opportunity … the Thirty Meter Telescope.

The Hawai‘i Supreme Court has upheld the Board of Land and Natural Resources decision to issue the Conservation District Use Permit for the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).

TMT will be three times as wide, with nine times more area, than the largest existing visible-light telescope in the world. This larger telescope will deliver sharper and deeper images than existing telescopes both on the ground and in space.

These gains can only be realized if we correct the blurring effects of the Earth’s atmosphere with special adaptive optics. Maunakea is one of the best sites in the world for using adaptive optics to sharpen images, as the atmosphere over Hawaii is calm, steady, and most often free of clouds and weather.

As a result, TMT will likely revolutionize our understanding of the universe and will help to ensure that Hawaii remains the global leader in astronomy. (TMT)

TMT will be able to study the earliest galaxies that formed, when the universe was only a small percentage of its present age; galaxies containing stars comprised of raw materials from the Big Bang.

TMT will also extend the studies of the shapes, dynamics, and chemistry of early galaxies – from 5 to 6 billion years ago and further back in time to almost 13 billion years ago, when the very first structures in the universe were forming.

TMT will also study individual stars in our local group of galaxies at a volume nearly 100 times larger than currently possible.

By resolving and studying these individual stars, we can determine how our Milky Way Galaxy and its nearest neighbors have grown, interacted, and possibly even merged (i.e. captured dwarf galaxies) over the history of the universe. (TMT)

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October 28, 2018 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Koʻolau Volcano

O‘ahu used to be nearly twice as big as it is now. (Thompson) The Island consists of two major shield volcanoes: Waiʻanae and Koʻolau; the eroded remnants of which are the Waiʻanae Range and the Koʻolau Range.

Waiʻanae is the older of the two (breaking the ocean surface ~3.9 to ~2.8 million-years ago) and makes up the western part of O‘ahu. Koʻolau volcano started as a seamount above the Hawaiian hotspot around 4-million years ago. It broke sea level some time prior to 2.9-million years ago.

Koʻolaupoko, one of O‘ahu’s six ancient moku (districts,) is bounded by Kalaeoka‘ō‘io, which is a point near the center of the northeast coast at Kualoa; the crest of the Koʻolau Range to the west; and Makapuʻu Point on the southeastern tip of the island.

This expanse also generally delineates the extent of Koʻolau Volcano – effectively from and including Kāne‘ohe to Kailua to Waimānalo. A significant landslide and ongoing erosion reshaped the volcano.

About 2-million years ago, much of the northeast flank of Koʻolau volcano was sheared off and material was swept onto the ocean floor (named the Nuʻuanu Avalanche) – one of the largest landslides on Earth.

The Pali is the remaining edge of the giant basin, or caldera, formed by the volcano. At its base are the towns of Kāne’ohe, Kailua and Waimānalo – beyond that, open ocean. The other half of the caldera, an area the size of Brooklyn, tore away and tumbled into the ocean. (Sullivan)

Material swept more than 140-miles north of O‘ahu and Molokai. For the last 85-miles of its journey, the avalanche traveled uphill by about 1000 feet, leaving jumbled blocks – once part of O‘ahu – scattered over more than 9,000-square miles of seafloor. (Sinton)

Residual ridges, remnants of the old Koʻolau volcano, extend northeast from the Pali. These include the Mokulua islands, Olomana, Kapaʻa (where the quarry is,) Mahinui (Oneawa, Kalaheo) and Keolu Hills.

Mōkapu Peninsula (where Marine Corps Base Hawai‘i is situated) is evidence of subsequent secondary volcanic eruptions that formed Ulupaʻu Crater (the large hill on the Kailua side of the peninsula,) Pu‘u Hawaiiloa (the central hill that originally had the base control tower, now has radar (‘the hill’,)) Pyramid Rock and the nearby Moku Manu (Bird Island.)

Following a period of dormancy, Koʻolau erupted about 1-million years ago (known as the Honolulu Volcanic Series) and created landmarks such as Lēʻahi (Diamond Head,) Hanauma Bay, Pūowaina (Punchbowl Crater) and Āliapaʻakai (Salt Lake.) Another tuff cone is Mānana Island (Rabbit Island.)

Pounded by the tradewind and rains, the windward side of O‘ahu is more weathered than the leeward areas of the island, and now this vast caldera wall is reduced to a line of sheer cliffs stretching from Makapuʻu to Kualoa and beyond.

The flat valley floors are extensively eroded, and are now mostly joined, studded here and there with isolated remnant peaks and ridges connected to the central range. (Klieger)

Coral reefs and marine terraces were formed at different elevations due to the changing sea levels over time. There are some broad lowland areas in the lower reaches of deeply alluvial valleys. (Moberly)

It was the broadness of this coastal plain (which included swampy areas near the shore) that distinguished Koʻolaupoko from other areas of O‘ahu, and most likely helped account for the intensity and productiveness of agriculture.

The abundant rainfall produces constantly flowing streams that supported the vast expanse of wetland kalo (taro) lo‘i (pondfields) that once extended throughout Koʻolaupoko. (Klieger)

Because Kāne’ohe Bay has a deep lagoon between an outer reef and the shore, the reef is considered by some geologists to be a barrier reef, the only example in Hawaii. Several fishponds lined the bay.

Mokoliʻi (Chinaman’s Hat) and Mokuoloe (Coconut Island) are erosional remnants of the bedrock Koʻolau basalt; Kapapa and Kekepa (Turtleback) Islands are of limestone; and Ahu O Laka Island is a sand bar that is uncovered at low tide. (Moberly)

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