General | Page 53 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

March 8, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Twain and Maui

Mark Twain wrote books about some of his travels (that included a visit to Hawai‘i) … one such, Roughing It. Here are some of his comments about Maui.

We “thence sailed to the island of Maui, and spent several weeks there very pleasantly.”

“I still remember, with a sense of indolent luxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge there, called the Iao Valley. The trail lay along the edge of a brawling stream in the bottom of the gorge–a shady route, for it was well roofed with the verdant domes of forest trees.”

“Through openings in the foliage we glimpsed picturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes and new charms with every step of our progress.”

“Perpendicular walls from one to three thousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously plumed with varied foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns.”

“Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shining fronts, mottling them with blots; billowy masses of white vapor hid the turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background of gleaming green crags and cones that came and went, through the veiling mists, like islands drifting in a fog …”

“… sometimes the cloudy curtain descended till half the canon wall was hidden, then shredded gradually away till only airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it—then swept aloft and left it glorified in the sun again.”

“Now and then, as our position changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin of castellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hung with garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back again and hid themselves once more in the foliage.”

“Presently a verdure-clad needle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner, and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley.”

“It seemed to me that if Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made – therefore, why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump?”

“But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala – which means, translated, ‘the house of the sun.’”

“We climbed a thousand feet up the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then camped, and next day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit, where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night.”

“With the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us. Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silent wonders.”

“The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surface seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad valley below appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantations alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished to mossy tufts.”

“Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely grouped together; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at these things – not down.”

“We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowl ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted away into the sky above us!”

“It was curious; and not only curious, but aggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb ten thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery.”

“However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it; for, all we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds.”

“Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this singular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy.”

“I have spoken of the outside view–but we had an inside one, too. That was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks, half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering down the almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump …”

“…kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our view as they sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and only betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and coming to a halt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five hundred feet down from where they started!”

“It was magnificent sport. We wore ourselves out at it.”

“The crater of Vesuvius, … is a modest pit about a thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilauea is somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference.”

“But what are either of them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala?”

“I will not offer any figures of my own, but give official ones–those of Commander Wilkes, U.S.N., who surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty-seven miles in circumference!”

“If it had a level bottom it would make a fine site for a city like London.”

“It must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplating in the old days when its furnaces gave full rein to their anger.”

“Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidly together, a thousand feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean …”

“…-not a vestige of anything was left in view but just a little of the rim of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, and gathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was stored to the brim with a fleecy fog).”

“Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor stretched without a break–not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow creases between …”

“… and with here and there stately piles of vapory architecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain–some near at hand, some in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony of the remote solitudes.”

“There was little conversation, for the impressive scene overawed speech.”

“I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world.”

“While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection appeared in the East. A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste …”

“… flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of rich coloring.”

“It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of it will remain with me always.”

March 5, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The “Japanese Problem”

Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, Culture, Heritage, Identity … some have suggested that about 100-years ago, folks used “racial” referring more specifically to nationality rather than ethnicity. In other words, the concern then was that a foreign nation was gradually supplanting parts of another.

Never-the-less, at the time, folks were concerned with the growing numbers of foreign nationals, especially Japanese; racial conflicts were developing and the military feared Japanese expansion. Growing immigrant population, including those from Japan started to concern some in the Islands, as well as on the continent.

In response, the Commission of Relations with Japan, appointed by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America retained Professor HA Millis of the University of Kansas who authored the “Japanese Problem in the United States” (1915.)

He “believe(d) in restriction in numbers and in keeping the laborers from immigrating to this country. But once here, the Japanese should not be discriminated against.” (Millis; New York Times)

However, a later incident in Hawaiʻi (1920) is viewed as a catalyst to actions that resulted in The Japanese Exclusion Act to address what were real, as well as imagined conceptions, misconceptions and opinions.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves; let’s look back.

The early Polynesian settlers to Hawaiʻi brought sugar cane with them and demonstrated that it could be grown successfully.

Since it was a crop that produced a choice food product that could be shipped to distant markets, its culture on a field and commercial scale was started as early as 1800 and it continued to grow.

The first commercially-viable sugar plantation, Ladd and Company, was started at Kōloa on Kaua‘i. On July 29, 1835, Ladd obtained a 50-year lease on nearly 1,000-acres of land and established a plantation and mill site in Kōloa.

It was to change the face of Hawai‘i forever, launching an entire economy, lifestyle and practice of monocropping that lasted for over a century. Sugar gradually replaced sandalwood and whaling in the mid-19th century and became the principal industry in the Islands.

Sugar was the dominant economic force in Hawaiʻi for over a century, other plantations soon followed Kōloa. A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape.

Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system. By 1883, more than 50-plantations were producing sugar on five islands.

A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge; the answer was imported labor. Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants” (providing the legal basis for contract-labor system,) labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America.

The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.) Between 1852 and 1884, the population of Chinese in Hawaiʻi increased from 364 to 18,254, to become almost a quarter of the population of the Kingdom. The US Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882 (effective in Hawaiʻi in 1902) closed further immigration of persons of Chinese ancestry to Hawai’i, except for the few individuals who could qualify for an exempt status.

In 1868, approximately 150-Japanese came to Hawaiʻi to work on sugar plantations and another 40 to Guam. This unauthorized recruitment and shipment of laborers, known as the gannenmono (“first year men”,) marked the beginning of Japanese labor migration overseas. (JANM)

In March 1881, King Kalākaua visited Japan during which he discussed with Emperor Meiji Hawaiʻi’s desire to encourage Japanese nationals to settle in Hawaiʻi; this improved the relationship of the Hawaiian Kingdom with the Japanese government. (Nordyke/Matsumoto)

The first 943-government-sponsored, Kanyaku Imin, Japanese immigrants to Hawaiʻi arrived in Honolulu on February 8, 1885. Subsequent government approval was given for a second set of 930-immigrants who arrived in Hawaii on June 17, 1885. More followed.

In 1919, in commemoration of the coronation of Emperor Yoshihito (and a sign of good Japanese-Hawaiian relations,) Japanese in Hawaiʻi offered to construct a modified duplicate of the fountain in Hibiya Park Tokyo in Kapiʻolani Park.

The official presentation of the “Phoenix Fountain” was conducted by Consul General Moroi who announced the fountain was a “testimonial of friendship and equality of the Japanese residing in the Hawaiian Islands.”

One Japanese speaker noted, “We are assembled here to mark a spot of everlasting importance in the annals of the history of the Japanese people of Hawaiʻi.” (It was later replaced and is now known as the Louise Dillingham Memorial Fountain.

But discord was imminent.

Growing immigrant population, including those from Japan, started to concern some, in the Islands, as well as on the continent. Many Americans had begun to look at Japan and the Japanese with deep suspicion.

In 1920, demanding increases in pay, Japanese sugar workers on Oʻahu struck the plantations – approximately 6,000 workers, over three quarters of the labor force, walked off the job (only Oʻahu workers walked off, they relied on neighbor island for support.)

Though the strike was on Oʻahu, its impact was felt across the Islands.

At about this time, Olaʻa Sugar Company was established in Puna on the Island of Hawaiʻi; Juzaburo Sakamaki was hired as the company’s only regular interpreter.

As interpreter, Sakamaki was the only pipeline between the company and the Japanese immigrants who made up the majority of the labor force at Olaʻa Plantation. Sakamaki had sided with management during the labor dispute.

Then, a small item in the June 4, 1920 Honolulu Star Bulletin noted, “The home of a Japanese eight miles from Olaa was blown up with giant powder last night.” The newspaper did not give the name of the victim, but it reported that the man was in a back bedroom at the time and was not killed, even though the front of the house was destroyed. (UC Press)

It turns out the attack was on Sakamaki’s home.

The Territory of Hawaiʻi charged leaders of the Federation of Japanese Labor with conspiracy to assassinate Sakamaki in order to intimidate opponents of the strike and alleged, further, that the strike was part of a concerted effort to take over the Islands by Japan.

It took the jury less than five hours to reach a verdict on the fifteen defendants. Judge Banks then sentenced all the defendants to “be imprisoned in Oʻahu prison at hard labor for the term of not less than four years nor more than ten years.” (UC Press)

Some suggest it was the catalyst for legislation restricting immigration into the US.

On December 5, 1923, Rep. Albert Johnson, chairman of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, had submitted to the House a new immigration quota bill. Having heard about the “Japanese conspiracy” over and over from Hawaiian representatives, Johnson finally decided to propose a new law prohibiting the immigration of all Asians.

The subsequent Johnson Reed Immigration Quota Act ((Immigration Act of 1924) limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890 (down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921.)) It passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming majorities: in the House 308 to 58 and in the Senate 69 to 9.

I am reminded of the simple question, “Can we, can we all get along … can we, can we get along?” (Rodney King)

March 4, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kūpeʻe Niho ʻIlio

“The hula was a religious service, in which poetry, music, pantomime, and the dance lent themselves, under the forms of dramatic art, to the refreshment of men’s minds.”

“Its view of life was idyllic, and it gave itself to the celebration of those mythical times when gods and goddesses moved on the earth as men and women and when men and women were as gods.”

“As to subject-matter, its warp was spun largely from the bowels of the old-time mythology into cords through which the race maintained vital connection with its mysterious past.”

“The people were superstitiously religious; one finds their drama saturated with religious feeling; hedged about with tabu, loaded down with prayer and sacrifice. “

“They were poetical; nature was full of voices for their ears; their thoughts came to them as images; nature was to them an allegory; all this found expression in their dramatic art.”

“The ancient Hawaiians did not personally and informally indulge in the dance for their own amusement, as does pleasure loving society at the present time.”

“We are wont to think of the old-time Hawaiians as light-hearted children of nature, given to spontaneous outbursts of song and dance as the mood seized them …”

“… quite as the rustics of ‘merrie England’ joined hands and tripped ‘the light fantastic toe’ in the joyous month of May or shouted the harvest home at a later season. “

“The genius of the Hawaiian was different.”

“With him the dance was an affair of premeditation, an organized effort, guarded by the traditions of a somber religion. And this characteristic, with qualifications, will be found to belong to popular Hawaiian sport and amusement of every variety.” (Nathaniel Bright Emerson.)

The costume of the hula dancer was much the same for both sexes, its chief article a simple short skirt about the waist, the pa-u. When the time has come for a dance, the halau becomes one common dressing room. At a signal from the kumu the work begins. The putting on of each article of costume is accompanied by a special song.

First come the ku-pe‘e, anklets of whale teeth, bone, shell-work, dog-teeth, fiber-stuffs, and what not. While all stoop in unison they chant the song of the anklet:

Aala kupukupu ka uka o Kane-hoa.
E ho-a!
Hoa na llma o ka makani, he Wai-kaloa
He Wai-kaloa ka makanl anu Lihue.
Alina lehua i kau ka opua
Ku’u pua,
Ku’u pua i‘ini e ku-i a lei.
Ina ia oe ke lei ‘a mai ia.

Fragrant the grasses of high Kane-hoa.
Bind on the anklets, bind!
Bind with finger deft as the wind
That cools the air of this bower.
Lehua bloom pales at my flower,
O sweetheart of mine,
Bud that I’d pluck and wear in my wreath,
If thou wert but a flower!
(Anklet Song, Emerson)

“In times long past anklets made from hundreds of dog teeth which, strung on a foundation of olona netting in much the same manner as feathers were woven into the fabric of a fiber mesh to make the famous feather capes, were worn in the hula to accentuate the rhythms of the feet in dancing. They were called kupee niho ilio, dog tooth bracelets.” (Roberts)

’The canine teeth of dogs (’ilio) with holes drilled through the root and strung on a cord have been regarded as dog-tooth necklaces (lei ’ilio).’

‘They may have been used temporarily as such, but it is more likely that they were so strung until a sufficient number had been collected to make the dog-tooth leg ornament characteristic of Hawaii.’

’Dogtooth leg ornaments (kupe’e niho ’ilio), worn by men dancers, are peculiar to Hawaii.’ (Buck) They could also be considered instruments, as they underlined the sounds of stamping feet.

February 25, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Paniolo

Horses arrived in the American continent in 1519 in Mexico with Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes, and cattle soon followed in 1521 with Gregorio de Villalobos. By the 1600s and 1700s Spanish-Mexican settlements and ranches were started in areas such as the lower Rio Grande.

As expeditions moved north transplanting the cattle and horses to the Southwest. After the Civil War, with the abundance of wild cattle in the Southwest and a market in the East, the era of the cattle drives to the railheads, large ranches and range cowboys began. (Texas State Historical Association)

The fiesta, originally a legacy from feudal Spain, quickly became an integral part of the Mexican culture. The fiesta de toros was introduced by the conquistadores on St John’s Day, June 24, 1526 to celebrate both the Saint and Coretz’ return.

The corridas became standard Sunday sports as well as Christmas fiestas throughout the country. A popular sport in 17^th century Mexico was riding wild bucking horses. Colear (grabbing a bull’s tail) became a traditional fiesta contest. Roping evolved from a utilitarian skill to a sport. (LeCompte)

Vaqueros (Mexican cowboys) drove cattle long before cowboys, back in the days when Texas belonged to Spain. One of their main paths took them back and forth between what we now call south Texas and Mexico City.

Even though it was tough work, to be a vaquero carried quite the mark of pride. Over a century before the cowboy arrived on the scene, vaqueros took the first steps to tame the Wild West. (Texas Parks and Wildlife)

“A good half century before the Western beef-cattle industry blossomed in Texas, a singular breed of professional horsemen calling themselves ‘vaqueros’ had already set the style, evolved the equipment and techniques, and even developed much of the vocabulary that would become the stamp of the American cowboy.” (Macaraeg)

Rodeo has long been thought of as a distinctly American sport, the horsemanship and ropemanship skills of the early Mexicans were likely the precursor to American rodeo. (LeCompte)

Having said that, some still state that the ‘Old Glory Blowout’ on July 4, 1882 in North Platte, Nebraska was the first organized rodeo in the world. Cash prizes were awarded to the winners of the bucking bronco, buffalo riding, steer roping and horse racing events. (Visit North Platte)

William F “Buffalo Bill” Cody (Pony Express rider, bison hunter for the Kansas Pacific Railroad and then scout for the US Army) put together the event. It was organized at a privately-owned racetrack in town, and in conjunction with the last of the big open-range roundups in Nebraska.

It is heralded as the beginning of rodeo. It was about a year later (May 19, 1883) that Cody opened his “Wild West Show” in Omaha Nebraska. (National Cowboy Museum)

In the Islands, the gift of a few cattle, given to Kamehameha I by Captain George Vancouver in 1793, spawned a rich tradition of cowboy and ranch culture that is still here, today.

With a kapu against killing the cattle, by 1830, wild bullocks posed a serious and dangerous threat to humans. Spurred also by the growing business of reprovisioning visiting ships with fresh meat and vegetables, Kamehameha III and Kaʻahumanu saw the wisdom of bringing in experienced cowboys.

“The formalization of ranching operations on Hawai‘i evolved in response to the growing threat of herds of wild cattle and goats to the Hawaiian environment, and the rise and fall of other business interests leading up to the middle 1800s.” (Maly)

Kamehameha III had vaqueros brought to the islands to teach the Hawaiians the skills of herding and handling cattle.

The vaqueros found the Hawaiians to be capable students, and by the 1870s, the Hawaiian cowboys came to be known as the “paniola” for the Espanola (Spanish) vaqueros who had been brought to the islands (though today, the Hawaiian cowboy is more commonly called “paniolo”). (Maly)

The Hawaiian cowboy, nicknamed “paniolo,” played an important role in the economic and cultural development of Hawaiʻi and helped to establish the islands as a major cattle exporter to California, the Americas and the Pacific Rim for over a century.

Some might not realize that Hawaiʻi’s working paniolo preceded the emergence of the American cowboy in the American West.

After winning the Revolutionary war (1781), American settlers started to pour into the “west;” by 1788, the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory was in Ohio.

In 1800, the western frontier extended to the Mississippi River, which bisects the continental United States north-to-south from just west of the Great Lakes to the delta near New Orleans.

Then, in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the nation.

The Battle of the Alamo was in 1836; later that year, Texas became independent, the Mexicans left, leaving their cattle behind. Texan farmers claimed the cattle and set up their own ranches.

It wasn’t until the 1840s that the wagon trains really started travelling to the far west. Then, with the US victory in the Mexican-American war and gold soon found in California, the rush to the West was on.

The cattle trade in the American West was at its peak from 1867 until the early-1880s. And, when in cattle country, you can expect rodeos. Headlines in Island and Wyoming newspapers in August of 1908 announced rodeo history.

Twelve thousand spectators, a huge number for those days, watched Ikua Purdy, Jack Low, and Archie Kaaua from Hawaiʻi carry off top awards at the world-famous Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo (the “granddaddy” of rodeo.).

Unlike today’s calf-roping, riders lassoed powerful, full-grown steers. The Cheyenne paper reported that the performances of the dashing Hawaiians, in their vaquero-style clothing and flower-covered, “took the breath of the American cowboys.”

Under drizzling skies, Purdy won the World’s Steer Roping Championship—roping, throwing and tying the steer in 56 seconds. Kaaua and Low took third and sixth place.

They each accomplished these feats on borrowed horses.

Purdy worked at Parker Ranch prior traveling to Cheyenne, Wyoming; his victory demonstrated the exceptional skills of the paniolo to mainland cowboys who long regarded rodeo and roping as their own domain.

On arriving home, the men were met at dockside by thousands of cheering fans and also honored by parades and other festivities on Maui and Hawai‘i.

Waimea-born Purdy moved to Ulupalakua, Maui and resumed his work as a paniolo until his death in 1945. He did not return to the mainland to defend his title, in fact he never left Hawaii’s shores again. But his victory and legend live on in Hawaiʻi and the annals of rodeo history.

In 1999, Ikua Purdy was voted into the National Cowboy Museum, Rodeo Hall of Fame. That same year he was the first inductee to the Paniolo Hall of Fame established by the Oʻahu Cattlemen’s Association.

In 2003, a large bronze statue of Purdy roping a steer was placed in Waimea town on the Big Island, erected by the Paniolo Preservation Society. In October 2007, Purdy was inducted into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame.

February 24, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Air Mail

In the mid-19th century the Wild West was largely unexplored. Discovery of gold in 1848 made California a destination for tens of thousands from the east; communication back east had it challenges.

One way, the Pony Express, used 400 horses and employed 183 men only for a brief 20 month period starting on April 3, 1860 in order to carry mail and news across nearly 2,000-miles between about 165 stations from St. Joseph, Missouri to San Francisco, California once or twice a week in 10-16 days.

Then, on October 24, 1861, wires were joined on the first transcontinental telegraph; the Pony Express mail delivery was discontinued by November 1861.

The driving of the ‘Last Spike’ at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869 brought the transcontinental railroad, into the scene. Coast-to-coast rail mail took about 10-11 days to deliver.

Then, on December 14, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright tossed a coin to decide who would fly first. At 10:35 am, December 17, 1903, Orville was at the controls and kept the plane aloft until it hit the sand about 120 feet from the rail – the first controlled and sustained power flight. (NPS)

To demonstrate the potential of transporting mail by air, the Post Office approved a special air mail flight as part of the festivities at an international air meet on September 23, 1911, on Long Island, New York.

With a full mail bag squeezed between his legs, pilot Earle Ovington took off and flew to Mineola, a few miles away. He banked his airplane and pushed the bag overboard. It fell to the ground and was retrieved by the local postmaster. (Smithsonian)

On February 22, 1921, four air mail flights set out to prove the mail could be flown coast to coast in record time by flying day and night. The going proved rough. One pilot died in a crash. Treacherous weather stopped others.

But the fourth flight got through, making it from San Francisco to New York in 33 hours and 20 minutes-a distance that took 4½ days by train and 3 days by air/rail (flown by day and shipped by train at night). (Smithsonian)

Early transcontinental airmail delivery was a hybrid system. In 1922, letters sent by airmail would have to leapfrog the country, traveling by air during the day and by train at night. Using this process, a letter moving at its absolute fastest might take about 83 hours to get from New York to San Francisco.

The few pilots who did try to travel at night during this time were taking their lives in their hands. Nearly 1-in-10 early airmail pilots died during the early days of the postal service’s airmail initiative, and emergency landings were common.

There had to be a safer way. Enter the highway of light — a system of airmail beacons that spanned the country. (Pope)

During the spring and summer of 1923, work on a lighted airway between Cheyenne, WY, and Chicago, IL, was being pushed forward with a view to carrying out certain experiments to determine whether cross-country night flying on a regular schedule was possible.

They wanted to see if transcontinental air mail service between New York and San Francisco could be regularly maintained. This was certainly a huge undertaking, as up to this time very little night flying had been done and there were no lighted airways in existence. (Air Mail Pioneers)

In the last half of 1923 and the first half of 1924, 289-flashing gas beacons were installed between Chicago and Cheyenne; 34-emergency landing fields between the same points were rented, equipped with rotating electric beacons, boundary markers, and telephones.

Five terminal landing fields were equipped with beacons, floodlights and boundary markers; 17 planes were equipped with luminous instruments, navigation lights, landing lights and parachute flares.

An 18-inch rotating beacon, mounted on top of a 50-foot windmill tower, was installed at each emergency field. This beacon was also set at a fraction of a degree above the horizon, revolving at the rate of six times a minute, and was visible to the pilots on clear nights from 60 to 70 miles.

A 36-inch-high intensity arc revolving searchlight of approximately 500,000 candlepower was installed on a 50-foot tower at the regular fields. It revolved at the rate of three times per minute and on clear nights could be seen by the pilots for a distance of 130 to 150 miles.

Concrete arrows, painted bright yellow, were at the foot of the 50-foot towers. The arrows were visible from a distance of ten miles, and each arrow pointed the way towards the next, some three miles distant.

In 1924 and 1925, the lighted airways were extended east from Chicago to Cleveland and New York and west from Cheyenne through Rock Springs, Wyoming, to Salt Lake City and then on to San Francisco. By the end of 1925, the US Air Mail truly had a day and night transcontinental airmail route covering a distance of slightly over 2,000-miles. (Air Mail Pioneers)

In 1926 management of the beacon system was turned over to the Department of Commerce, which continued expansion or the airmail beacon system until 1929. By 1933 the Airways Division of the Department of Commerce had completed 18,000 miles of lighted airways, installed 1,550 light beacons, and constructed over 250 airfields. (NPS)

Once the new lighted airway was in place, that same letter that used to take 83-hours took just 33-hours to get from New York to San Francisco.

But by the 1930s, navigation and radio technology had improved to allow flight without land-based visual guidance. And even though radio was all the rage — and fast becoming a coast-to-coast experience — sending a letter was still the most economical way to deliver any message among private citizens. (Pope)

In the Islands, on October 8, 1934, Inter-Island Airways made the first official US airmail flight in Hawai‘i from John Rodgers Airport. (hawaii-gov) Shortly after, on April 17, 1935, Pan American landed a survey flight crew to look at air mail service from California to Hawai‘i and on to Midway, Wake and Guam.

On November 22, 1935, Postmaster General James A Farley and Mr Juan Trippe ordered Pilot Musick, commanding Pan Am’s China Clipper, to take off on the first airmail flight, by way of Hawai‘i and the other islands, on to its Manila destination.

Twenty thousand spectators were on hand to watch festivities at Alameda, all eyes on the immense silver airplane. They saw an estimated 110,000 pieces of mail weighing nearly two tons being stowed on board. (hawaii-gov)

October 21, 1936 saw the first passenger flight. Pan Am provided weekly service along recently impossible routes. Although the first services stopped at Manila for political reasons, service continued to expand and eventually reached Hong Kong and Singapore. (Pacific Aviation Museum)