Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Colonialism

Colonization (and the ‘Peopling of the Pacific’) began about 40,000 years ago with movement from Asia; by BC 1250, people were settling in the eastern Pacific. (Kirch) By BC 800, Polynesians settled in Samoa. (PVS)

Using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, studies suggest it was about 900-1000 AD that “Polynesian explorers first made their remarkable voyage from central Eastern Polynesia Islands, across the doldrums and into the North Pacific, to discover Hawai‘i.” (Kirch)

The motivations of the voyagers varied. Some left to explore the world or to seek adventure. Others departed to find new land or new resources because of growing populations or prolonged droughts and other ecological disasters in their homelands. (PVS)

At some point, Polynesians probably reached the coast of South America, returning with the sweet potato (a plant of undoubted American origins.) By AD 1000, sweet potato was transferred into central Polynesia. (Kirch)

The central Society Islands were colonized between AD 1025 and 1120 and dispersed to New Zealand, Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui and other locations between AD 1190 and 1290. (PVS)

The Pacific settlement took a thousand years. However, after the 14th-century, the archaeological evidence reveals a dramatic expansion of population and food production in Hawai‘i. Perhaps the resources and energies of the Hawaiian people went into developing their land rather than travel. (Kawaharada; PVS)

Over in the Atlantic, Europeans were sailing close to the coastlines of continents before developing navigational instruments that would allow them to venture onto the open ocean; however, voyagers from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa began to settle islands in an ocean area of over 10-million square miles.

The pioneer in European expansion was Portugal, which, after 1385, was a united kingdom, and, unlike other European countries, was free from internal conflicts. Portugal focused its energies on Africa’s western coast. It was Spain that would stumble upon the New World. (Mintz & McNeil)

In 1492, Columbus was trying to find a new route to the Far East, to India, China, Japan and the Spice Islands. If he could reach these lands, he would be able to bring back rich cargoes of silks and spices.

By the time European explorers entered the Pacific in the 15th-century almost all of the habitable islands had been settled for hundreds of years and oral traditions told of explorations, migrations and travels across this expanse. (Kawaharada)

The 15th and 16th century voyages of discovery brought Europe, Africa and the Americas into direct contact, producing an exchange of foods, animals and diseases that scholars call the “Columbian Exchange.”

For more than a century, Spain and Portugal were the only European powers with New World colonies. After 1600, however, other European countries began to emulate their example.

By the end of the 16th century, a thousand French ships a year were engaged in the fur trade along the St Lawrence River and the interior, where the French constructed forts, missions and trading posts.

England established its first permanent colonies in North America during the 17th century. Between 1660 and 1760, England sought to centralize control over its New World Empire and began to impose a series of imperial laws upon its American colonies. (Mintz & McNeil) (The associated conflict was later resolved through the Revolutionary War and formation of the United States.)

By the time Europeans arrived in Hawai‘i in the 18th-century, voyaging between Hawai‘i and the rest of Polynesia had ceased for more than 400 years, perhaps the last voyager being Pāʻao or Mōʻīkeha in the 14th-century. (Kawaharada)

Although New Zealand was originally settled by Polynesian migrants (the ancestors of Maori) around AD 1250–1300, links with Polynesia were lost until European vessels renewed those connections.

With the expansion of European and North American whaling activities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the protected anchorages of New Zealand’s Bay of Islands became an important base for the provisioning of Pacific-bound vessels, particularly from America. (Te Ara)

Maori agriculture was transformed by servicing whaling ships. Forests were cleared to make way for cultivation of potatoes, wheat and maize, and Polynesians were recruited aboard American ships bound for the Pacific whaling grounds.

Many of these vessels deliberately left New England short-handed, intending to pick up a full crew in New Zealand, Hawaiʻi or elsewhere amongst the Pacific Islands.

The foundation of the New South Wales penal colony in 1788, and the expansion of European settlement to Hobart Town in Tasmania, and across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, soon fostered sporadic trade linkages with the Pacific Islands. (Te Ara)

The first European colonies in Oceania were Australia (1788) and New Zealand (1840.) Soon after, the French seized French Polynesia (1842) and New Caledonia (1853.) Britain, at first, resisted pressure to annex scattered South Pacific Islands; however, Fiji was taken in 1874.

Then came the emergence of the Panama Canal and the rush of annexations by Britain, France, Germany and the US between 1884 and 1900. In 1899, Samoa was split between Germany and the US, with Tonga and the Solomon Islands were added to Britain. (Stanley)

Early on, in the Pacific, some thought the US was a colony of Great Britain. Until Thomas ap Catesby Jones’s visit to the Society Islands in 1826, “the inhabitants supposed the United States to be a colony of Great Britain, upon a par with Sydney, New South Wales, &c, &c.”

Jones then went to Hawaiʻi; an astonished Kalanimōku (who was the equivalent to Prime Minister in the Islands) noted “It is so…. Is America and England equal? We never understood so before.”

“We knew that England was our friend and that Capt Charlton was here to protect us, but we did not know that Mr Jones, the Commercial Agent, was the representative of America.” (Jones Report to Navy Department, 1827) During Jones’ visit in 1826, he signed an Articles of Arrangement (the first treaty between the US and Hawaiʻi.)

Later, on June 28, 1880, Kalakaua’s Premier Walter Murray Gibson, introduced a resolution in the legislature noting, “the Hawaiian Kingdom by its geographic position and political status is entitled to claim a Primacy in the family of Polynesian States …”

“The resolution concluded with an action “that a Royal Commissioner be appointed by His Majesty, to be styled a Royal Hawaiian Commissioner to the state and peoples of Polynesia …” (Kuykendall) They proposed a Polynesian Confederacy, with Kalakaua as its ruler.

“Then the idea of a great island confederacy dawned upon and fascinated him (Gibson.) He discerned but little difficulty in the way of organizing such a political union, over which Kalakaua would be the logical emperor, and he (Gibson) the Premier of an almost boundless empire of Polynesian archipelagoes.” (Wheeler) “Kalakaua’s dream of empire” failed.

The Polynesian Triangle is a geographical region of the Pacific Ocean with Hawaiʻi (1), New Zealand (Aotearoa) (2) and Rapa Nui (3) at its corners; at the center is Tahiti (5), with Samoa (4) to the west.

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Unexpected Partners

Lorrin Andrews Thurston was born on July 31, 1858 in Honolulu. His father was Asa Goodale Thurston and Sarah Andrews. On his father’s side he was grandson of Asa and Lucy Thurston of the Pioneer Company of missionaries; on his mother’s side, he was grandson of another early missionary, Lorrin Andrews.

Thurston was fluent in the Hawaiian language and gave himself the nickname Kakina. He attended Oʻahu College (Punahou,) and, later, law school at Columbia University.

He followed his father and became a member of the Hawaiʻi Legislature. In 1887, Thurston authored what became known as the Bayonet Constitution. He became the Minister of Interior.

In 1892, Thurston led the Annexation Club and participated in the revolution and overthrow of the constitutional monarchy (1893.) Thurston headed the commission sent to Washington DC for American annexation. (Smith)

A volcano enthusiast, in his childhood on Maui, he would act as an informal tour guide; Thurston first visited Kīlauea on the Island of Hawaiʻi in 1879 at the age of 21 with Louis von Tempsky. Thurston wrote that “we hired horses in Hilo and rode to the volcano, from about eight o’clock in the morning to five in the afternoon.” (NPS)

Ten years later Thurston’s first mark upon the Volcano landscape appeared. In 1889, using his position as Minister of the Interior, he oversaw the construction of an improved carriage road from Hilo to Volcano.

The road was completed in 1894 allowing four-horse stages to transport visitors from Hilo to Volcano in seven hours. This feat would greatly increase the number of people able to view the volcano at Kīlauea. (NPS)

In 1891, Thurston bought the Volcano House in the Island of Hawaiʻi.

George Lycurgus first left his native Sparta in Greece around 1876, when he was about 17 years old. He served in the Greek Army for 18 months. George sailed from Greece to Liverpool sometime in 1880 and from there docked in New York. Here the young boy, not knowing any English, started out by selling lemons.

The later found himself in San Francisco; however his brother John and a cousin, Peter Kamarinos, were in Hawaiʻi. By the fall of 1889, George was sailing on the ‘Australia’ to Hawaiʻi.

Lycurgus opened the California Wine Company in Honolulu. Another Lycurgus enterprise in Honolulu during those years was the Union Grill. He then got in the hotel business, with the ‘Sans Souci’ in Waikiki. (Maggioros)

“In 1893 Sans Souci was a rambling hostelry, nestled among the coconut and palm trees of Waikiki Beach. The guests occupied small bungalows, thatched-roof affairs about ten by twelve, the bed being the principal article of furniture. It was in one of these bungalows that Stevenson had established himself, propped up with pillows on the bed in his shirt-sleeves.” Scribner’s Magazine, August, 1926.

Lycurgus was a royalist and was implicated with other counter-revolutionists in supplying arms (1895.) He was arrested, thirteen counts of treason were filed against him and he was held at ‘The Reef’ (Oʻahu Prison) for 52-days. (Chapin)

Later, Thurston sold the Volcano House to Lycurgus. (Smith)

Starting in 1906, Thurston, a revolutionist, and Lycurgus, a counter-revolutionist, started to work together to have the volcano area made into Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.

In January 1912, geologist Thomas Jaggar arrived to investigate the volcano. A building for scientific instruments was built in a small building next to the hotel. Jaggar stayed in Volcano for the next 28 years.

Thurston and Lycurgus were instrumental in getting the volcano recognized as Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. On August 1, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the country’s 13th National Park into existence – Hawaiʻi National Park. At first, the park consisted of only the summits of Kīlauea and Mauna Loa on Hawaiʻi, and Haleakalā on Maui.

Eventually, Kilauea Caldera was added to the park, followed by the forests of Mauna Loa, the Kaʻu Desert, the rain forest of Olaʻa and the Kalapana archaeological area of the Puna/Kaʻu Historic District.

The National Park Service, within the federal Department of Interior, was created on August 25, 1916 by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act.

In 1916, Thurston, recognizing the long tradition of soldiers and sailors who had visited the area, proposed the establishment of a military camp at Kīlauea. Thurston promoted his idea and was able to raise enough funds through public subscription for the construction of buildings and other improvements. By the fall of 1916, the first group of soldiers arrived at Kīlauea Military Camp (KMC.) (NPS)

Later, in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built research offices, hiking trails and laid the foundations for much of the infrastructure and roads within the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and other parks across the country.

On, July 1, 1961, Hawaiʻi National Park’s units were separated and re-designated as Haleakalā National Park and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.

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by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Water Crisis

Neglect of the islands’ forests would be “suicidal,” for “everything fails with the failure of our water supply”. (Lyon; DLNR)

“Not enough rain and not enough water in the streams are great evils”.

“It appears to me to be unnecessary to again go deeply into the theory of the relation between forests and rainfall when all intelligent and observing people admit that the decrease or increase of rainfall goes pari passu (‘hand-in-hand’) with the decrease or increase of the forests.”

“The forest, which not only produces rain, but also retains the rainwater, holding it among its leaves and branches, its undergrowth, its myriads of roots and rootlets and its fallen debris, letting the rainwater trickle down slowly to the water streams and keeping them supplied for a long time”.

“(T)hat forest is not there. Rain pours down, the water rushes in torrents through the streams to the sea and soon after everything is dry again.” (Gjerdrum to HSPA, 1897)

Prior to 1820 all of Honolulu’s domestic drinking water was obtained from natural springs and the small river that runs through Nuʻuanu Valley.

Honolulu with its deep water port, abundant natural resources and friendly people soon became a favorite way station for whalers and traders crossing the Pacific Ocean.

The requirements of supplying these ships caused a waterfront storage tank to be installed at the lower end of Nuʻuanu Street. The water for that tank came from a taro patch on Emma Street.

The demand for drinking water from various springs and the Nuʻuanu Stream spurred the development of a public water supply distribution system that, upon its completion in 1862 provided water to the residents and businesses in downtown Honolulu. (DLNR)

“The water is pure, sweet, cool, clear as crystal, and comes from a spring in the mountains, and is distributed all over the town through leaden pipes.”

“You can find a hydrant spiriting away at the bases of three or four trees in a single yard, sometimes, so plenty and cheap is this excellent water. Only twenty-four dollars a year supplies a whole household with a limitless quantity of it.” (Twain, April 20, 1866

However, there was concern about the diminishing forests … and, with it, a crisis in the availability of water.

By the 1830s, forested lands in the Islands were in decline. The sandalwood trade had reduced sandalwood populations to such an extent that in 1839, Hawaii’s first forestry law restricted the harvest of sandalwood.

Cattle (which had been introduced in the late-1700s) continued to cause widespread destruction of native forests. (Idol) For many years, cattle were allowed an unrestricted range in the forests so that in many sections the forest is either dead or dying. (Griffith)

The almost total destruction of the undergrowth has allowed the soil to bake and harden thus causing the rainfall to run off rapidly with the resultant effect of very low water during the dry season. (Griffith)

“We are in trouble because we have no firewood and no la‘i (ti leaf,) and no timber for houses, it is said in the law that those who are living on the land can secure the things above stated, this is all right for those living on the lands which have forests, but, we who live on lands which have no forests, we are in trouble.”

“The children are eating raw potato because of no firewood, the mouths of the children are swollen from having eaten raw taro. We have been in trouble for three months, the Konohikis with wooded lands here in Kaneohe have absolutely withheld the firewood and la‘i and the timber for houses.” (Letter from Hio et al to House of Representatives, 1851; Hulili, Ulukau)

It reached a maximum by the late-1800s/early-twentieth century owing to burning of the forests to locate the sandalwood trees, demand for firewood, commercial logging operations, conversion to agricultural and pastureland, the effects of grazing and browsing ungulates (including cattle, goats, and pigs) and increased fire frequency. (Woodcock)

The sugar industry, still concerned about water shortages due to forest decline, sought and succeeded in establishing the forest reserve system, which instituted partnerships between public and private landowners to protect forests.

Due to the cooperation between public and private landowners, and another tax break for conservation of forests on private land in 1909, large scale reforestation, fencing and feral ungulate eradication efforts occurred across the islands.

The forests were transformed during this time, as millions of fast-growing nonnative trees were planted throughout the islands to quickly re-establish watersheds denuded by logging and ungulates.

Impending crisis also led to the development of groundwater wells (today’s primary source of drinking water in the Islands.) The McCandless brothers started drilling the first artesian well in the Hawaiian Islands in the rear of the James Campbell Ranch House at Honouliuli, Ewa District, on the flat land close to the sea.

“Mr. Wilder (then-Minister of the Interior under King Kalakaua) helped us in securing contracts for five wells, to be drilled for His Majesty, King Kalakaua: one in the Palace grounds, one at his home in Waikiki, and three others located on his properties in the outside districts.”

Over the next 55-years, McCandless Brothers drilled more than 700 good wells across the Islands. Their wells helped support and water the growing and expansive sugar and pineapple plantations including ʻEwa, Kahuku, Oʻahu, Waialua and other large producers, and also on the Islands of Maui, Hawaiʻi, Kauai and Molokai.

We are fortunate that 100-years ago (April 25, 1903) some forward thinkers had the good sense to set aside Hawai‘i’s forested lands and protected our forest watersheds under the State’s forest reserve system.

While I was at DLNR, we oversaw nearly 1-million acres of mauka watershed. Healthy forests are a goal for all of us in Hawai‘i, it’s as much about fresh water, erosion control, protected reefs and economic opportunities as it is about trees. (I am proud and honored to have served on the Board of Directors of the Hawai‘i Forest Institute.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Lanai Tsunami

The name Kaluakapo Crater or “Kalua Kapo” means “hole of darkness” (according to the field notes of Stearns, 1936; Keating & Helsley).

Three ancient shorelines (the Mahana, Kaluakapo and Manele) have been described at elevations of 365, 190 and 170 m [1,200, 625, and 560 feet] in the Kaluakapo Crater. Original observations/theories of a fossil-bearing outcrop at 1,200-feet was interpreted as an ancient shoreline.

Subsequently, some argued that this fossil evidence represented the highest inundation of tsunami waves associated with the collapse of the flanks of the Hawaiian Islands chain. (Keating & Helsley)

“Geologists have long debated whether the Hawaiian Islands have been periodically hit by ‘megatsunamis,’ triggered by massive landslides plunging into the ocean.”

“Indeed, several such slides have cascaded from the western flanks of the Big Island–including the 350-cubic-kilometer Alika 2 slide about 120,000 years ago.”  (Robert Irion)

“Some researchers think that a megatsunami from that slide deposited coral and seashells high on the slopes of the island of Lanai more than 100 kilometers away.”

“Others reject that interpretation, claiming that the deposits mark the level of shorelines carved into Lanai before tectonic processes lifted the island.”  (Robert Irion)

“[T]he giant wave hypothesis (GWH) suggests a submarine landslide southeast of Lanai triggered three ‘giant waves’ that rushed toward Lanai with initial velocities of 149 m/s, at intervals of only one and a half minutes.”

“The first wave reached 190 m elevation on Lanai and eroded the soils and churned up boulders. The second wave reached the 375 m elevation, and picked up the gravels in suspension and stripped the terrain.”

“The third wave reached 190 m high on the island slope taking boulders in suspension, then accelerated down slope, stripping soil and molding the boulders into mound-shaped bed forms.” (Keating & Helsley)

“Computer simulations show that the tsunami would have swamped the other islands as well. ‘These waves were truly catastrophic,’ [Geologist Gary McMurtry of the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa] says.”

“Still, [McMurtry] notes, they would be about as rare as megatsunamis from asteroids hitting the ocean–grave threats, but extremely unlikely in our lifetimes.” (Robert Irion)

Giant tsunamis, generated by submarine landslides in the Hawaiian Islands, have been thought to be responsible for the deposition of chaotic gravels high on the southern coastal slopes of the islands of Lanai and Molokai, Hawai‘i. Investigators  used uranium-thorium dating and a study of stratigraphic relationships.

That late investigation showed that deposits were formed by multiple events, separated by considerable periods of time, thus invalidating the main premise of the ‘giant wave’ theory.

Instead, the gravels were probably deposited during interglacial periods (when sea level was relatively high) by typical Hawaiian shoreline processes such as seasonal wave patterns, storm events and possibly ‘normal’ tsunamis, and reached their present height by uplift of Lanai. (Rubin, et al)

While the general consensus seems to be that a megatsunami was not the culprit, there have been other ‘normal’ tsunami that have impacted Lanai and other Islands.

“It was quite a severe earthquake as I remember. Another scary thing that happened on Lanai was a tidal wave during the building of Kaumalapau Harbor.”

“They were building the breakwater and they had a small locomotive that with the tracks ran out to the end so they could carry boulders out to build up the breakwater.”

“And this tidal wave came and later, we went down to see what damage had been done. And the tracks were twisted in knots and the locomotive was on its side. Ever since then, I’ve been very frightened of tidal waves.”

“No one was injured; it was just this damage because no homes were knocked down where the harbor was. (The homes were built on higher ground, so they were not damaged.)”

No one was working at the time … “I believe that tidal wave came during the middle of the night at a time when there was nobody down there.” (Jean Forbes Adams; UH Oral History, Lanai Ranch)

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Maliko Gulch Inverted Siphon

At the time of Haiku Sugar Company’s charter in 1858, there were only ten sugar companies in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.  Five of these sugar companies were located on the island of Maui:  East Maui Plantation at Kaluanui; Brewer Plantation at Haliʻimalie; LL Torbert and Captain James Makee’s plantation at Ulupalakua; Haiku Plantation; and Hana.

In 1869, Samuel Thomas Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin became business partners and bought 12-acres in Hāmākuapoko (an eastern Maui ahupuaʻa (land division.))  (They later formed Alexander & Baldwin, one of Hawai‘i’s ‘Big Five’ companies – and the only Big Five still in Hawai‘i.)

“The early years of the partnership of Alexander & Baldwin, represented a continual struggle against heavy odds. Haiku plantation had to have water.” (Men of Hawaii)

Then, the government granted Haiku Plantation the right to use the water flowing in streams down the broad slopes of Haleakala to the east of the plantation, and work was at once commenced on a ditch.

“The line, some seventeen miles in extent, with the exception of a few miles near the plantation, passes through the dense forest that covers the side of the mountain, and in running the levels for the work many large ravines and innumerable small valleys and gulches were encountered.”

“In the smaller of these the ditch winds its way, with here and there a flume striding the hollow, while through nine of the larger the water is carried in pipes twenty-six inches in diameter.”

“The digging of the ditch was a work of no small magnitude. A large gang of men, sometimes numbering two hundred, was employed in the work, and the providing of food, shelter, tools, etc, was equal to the care of a regiment of soldiers on the march.”

“As the grade of the ditch gradually carried the work high up into the woods, cart-roads had to be surveyed and cut from the main road to the shifting camps.”

“All the heavy timbers for flumes, etc., were painfully dragged up hill and down, and in and out of deep gulches, severely taxing the energies and strength of man and beast, while the ever-recurring question of a satisfactory food supply created a demand for everything eatable to be obtained from the natives within ten miles, besides large supplies drawn from Honolulu and abroad.”

“At the head of the work many difficult ledges of rock were encountered, and blasting and tunneling were resorted to, to reach the coveted water.” (FL Clarke, Thrum’s Annual, 1878)

Then came Maliko Gulch.

Maliko Gulch was too wide (and it was too expensive) to pipe the water via a bridge. They installed an inverted siphon in order to cross Maliko Gulch.  Maliko Gulch is a deeply incised stream valley with some sections of the valley floor more than 400 ft below the upland surface. (USGS)

“As the East Maui Irrigation Company report notes, Alexander planned to ‘pipe water across the gulch by means of a 1,110-foot-long inverted siphon.” (Witcher, Civil Engineering)

An inverted siphon uses a leakproof pipe that the ditch water flows into; the pipe is laid down, across and back up the Gulch ( and ends at a lower elevation than the where the ditch collects the water) – gravity pushes the water up the other side, into another ditch at the other side of the gulch.

“While work on the ditch was thus progressing, pipe makers from San Francisco were busied riveting together the broad sheets of iron to make the huge lengths of tube fitted to cross the deep ravines.” 

“These lengths had each to be immersed in a bath of pitch and tar which coated them inside and out, preserving the iron from rust, and effectually stopping all minute leaks.”

“The lengths thus prepared being placed in position in the bottom of the ravines, the upright lengths were fitted to each other (like lengths of stove-pipe) with the greatest care, and clamped firmly to the rocky sides of the cliffs.”

“Their perpendicular length varies from 90 feet to 450 feet; the greatest being the pipe that carries the water down into, across, and out of Maliko gulch to the Baldwin and Alexander Plantations.”

“At this point every one engaged on the work toiled at the risk of his life; for the sides of the ravines are almost perpendicular, and a ‘bed’ had to be constructed down these sides.”

“Then each length of pipe was lowered into the ravine and placed carefully in position; after which the perpendicular lengths were built up to the brink.”  (FL Clarke, Thrum’s Annual, 1878)

“When the ditch builders came to the last great obstacle, the deep gorge of Maliko, it became necessary in connection with the laying of the pipe down and up the sides of the precipices there encountered, for the workmen to lower themselves over the cliffs by rope, hand over hand.”

“This at first they absolutely refused to do. The crisis was serious.”

Just a few years before, “In 1876, while engaged in adjusting machinery at the sugar mill at the Pā‘ia plantation. Mr. Baldwin almost lost his life by being drawn between the rolls.”

“The engineer fortunately witnessed the accident and reversed the engine, but not before the right arm had been fearfully mangled almost up to the shoulder blade. The amputation was not followed by any serious results, but the handicap was a severe one to so energetic a worker as was Mr. Baldwin all his life.” (Mid Pacific, February 1912)

Back to the Maliko Gulch inverted siphon installation … while the workers initially refused, “[the one-armed] Baldwin met it by himself sliding down the rope, using his legs and his one arm, with which he alternately gripped and released the rope to take a fresh hold lower done.” (Arthur Baldwin)

“This was done before his injured arm had healed and with a straight fall of two hundred feet to the rocks below! The workmen were so shamed by this exhibition of courage on the part of their one armed manager, that they did not hesitate to follow him down the rope.”

“To keep the heart in them and to watch the progress of the work, Mr. Baldwin day after day went through this dangerous performance.” (Arthur Baldwin)

“Straining their financial resources almost to the breaking point, the young partners [Alexander and Baldwin] succeeded in bringing to completion the Hāmākua-Haiku ditch, the first important irrigation project in the islands.”

“The eventual enormous success of this enterprise made possible the great future of Alexander and Baldwin. Pā‘ia plantation was started and other extensive acreages were added to the partners’ holdings.” (Men of Hawaii)

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