Images of Old Hawaiʻi

  • Home
  • About
  • Categories
    • Ali’i / Chiefs / Governance
    • American Protestant Mission
    • Buildings
    • Collections
    • Economy
    • Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings
    • General
    • Hawaiian Traditions
    • Other Summaries
    • Mayflower Summaries
    • Mayflower Full Summaries
    • Military
    • Place Names
    • Prominent People
    • Schools
    • Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks
    • Voyage of the Thaddeus
  • Collections
  • Contact
  • Follow

September 17, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

“Dream City”

In 1843, as kids, Samuel Thomas Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin, sons of pioneer missionaries, met in Lahainā, Maui. They grew up together, became close friends and went on to develop a sugar-growing partnership that spanned generations and left an indelible mark on Hawaiʻi.

Fast forward 100-years to 1949, Alexander & Baldwin formed Kahului Development Co., Ltd. (KDCo) (the predecessor of A&B Properties, Inc.) to serve as a development arm of the agricultural-based entity.

This timing coincided with the sugar company’s plan to close down some plantation camps.  To provide for housing for its sugar workers, as well as meet post-WWII housing demand, KDCo announced a new residential development in Central Maui, in the area we now refer to as Kahului.

“Dream City,” a planned residential community was launched and over the next couple decades 3,500+ fee simple homes were offered for sale in 14-increments of the new development.

While the community originally was planned to house the company’s workers from Hawai‘i Commercial and Sugar (mills and plantations) and Kahului Railroad Co., the company decided to not limit ownership to their own employees.

Part of the prior plantation philosophy was to house imported laborers in camps, usually segregated by ethnic groups.  However, one goal of Dream City was to bring together the then-existing 25 plantation communities into a single planned modern urban setting.

Planning for the project took 2-years, under the services of Harland Bartholomew of Harland Bartholomew & Associates, St. Louis – a nationally recognized planning firm.

The first task was to identify the housing and living problems in central Maui, then develop a master plan on how best a new community could be designed.

Under this 25-year plan, Kahului quickly became one of the first and most successful planned towns west of the Rockies – and the first in Hawai‘i.

The homes were concrete and hollow-tile construction and thoroughly modern.  There are 17 different designs available. Each had three bedrooms and a floor space of 1,090 square feet, plus a garage.

The price (generally $6,000 to $9,200 – with terms of $600 down and payments of $50 per month) included all the bathroom fixtures, the kitchen sink, laundry trays, clothesline, all the fixtures, including switches and floor plugs.

The price did not include the landscape or furniture or kitchen appliances. The landscape work was to be done under the direction of the University of Hawaiʻi agricultural extension service, Maui branch.

The plan for Kahului included spaces for modern business and shopping centers, schools, churches, playgrounds and recreation facilities.  In 1951, the company built and opened the Kahului Shopping Center – Hawaiʻi’s third shopping center (behind Aloha (in Waipahu) and ʻĀina Haina.)

In January of 1948, Franklin D Richards, Director of the Federal Housing Administration described the new Kahului town housing project as the Nation’s “outstanding” development.

Mr. Richards said, “That house in Kahului is absolutely the best of its kind I have seen in 15 years’ experience as head of the FHA. I sincerely believe the Kahului home to represent the maximum in low-cost housing. There is nothing better in my experience in the continental United States, Alaska, Puerto Rico, or Hawaii.”

Reportedly, on July 25, 1950, Masaru Omuri carried his wife Evelyn over the threshold of their new home. It made the headlines in the local paper. The Omuris were the first of many residents to move into the Dream City (the “new Kahului.”)

As the development proceeded, the plantation villages were closed down, one by one, according to a schedule that gave the workers and the workers unions ten years’ advance notice.

It was announced that the plantation planned to be out of the housing business within ten years of the start of the project, and February 1, 1963, was the date it was all supposed to shut down. It took a little longer than that, but the schedule was implemented pretty much as planned.

The first homes were built along each side of Puʻunene Avenue on lots between 9,000 and 10,000 square feet.  The average price of these homes, as announced in July, 1949, was $7,250 each.

The development outpaced all of the planners’ expectations. At its peak, it was reported, houses and lots were being sold every two minutes.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook 

Follow Peter T Young on Google+ 

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn  

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

© 2019 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Kahului-Dream_City-Master_Plan-(co-maui-hi-us)-1947
Kahului-1950-1977-(co-maui-hi-us)
Kahului Naval Air Station - 1945
Kahului-USGS-UH_Manoa-(4811)-1965
Kahului Airport - 1950s
Puunene Store (left) and Kahului Railroad Station and post office (right). Kahului, Maui (KatsugoMiho)
Kahului Naval Air Station - 1940s
Kahului-Dream_City
Waialeale, Inter-Island Steamship. Pier 2. Kahului, Maui. Pre-World War II-(KatsugoMiho)
Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Amaral and Son, “'Dream City,' Maui, 1958
Kahului_Town_Development-1st_Increment-1949
Kahului_Town_Development-2nd_Increment-1951
Kahului_Town_Development-3rd_Increment-1952
Kahului_Town_Development-4th_Increment-1953
Kahului_Town_Development-5th_Increment-1955
Kahului_Town_Development-6th_Increment-1960

Filed Under: Economy, General, Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii Commercial and Sugar, Alexander and Baldwin, Kahului Railroad, Kahului, Kahului Development, Dream City, Hawaii, Maui

November 17, 2014 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Alexander & Baldwin

In 1843, Samuel Thomas Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin, sons of early missionaries to Hawaiʻi, met in Lāhainā, Maui. They grew up together, became close friends and went on to develop a sugar-growing partnership.

Alexander was the idea man, more outgoing and adventurous of the two. He had a gift for raising money to support his business projects.

Baldwin was more reserved and considered the “doer” of the partners; he completed the projects conceived by Alexander.

After studying on the Mainland, Alexander returned to Maui and began teaching at Lahainaluna, where he and his students successfully grew sugar cane and bananas.

Word of the venture spread to the owner of Waiheʻe sugar plantation near Wailuku, and Alexander was offered the manager’s position.

Alexander hired Baldwin as his assistant, who at the time was helping his brother raise sugar cane in Lāhainā. This was the beginning of a lifelong working partnership.

In 1869, the young men – Alexander was 33, Baldwin, 27 – purchased 12-acres of land in Makawao and the following year an additional 559-acres.  That same year, the partners planted sugar cane on their land marking the birth of what would become Alexander & Baldwin (A&B.)

In 1871, they saw the need for a reliable source of water, and to this end undertook the construction of the Hāmākua ditch in 1876.

Although not an engineer, Alexander devised an irrigation system that would bring water from the windward slopes of Haleakala to Central Maui to irrigate 3,000 acres of cane – their own and neighboring plantations.

Baldwin oversaw the Hāmākua Ditch project, known today as East Maui Irrigation Company (the oldest subsidiary of A&B,) and within two years the ditch was complete.

The completed Old Hāmākua Ditch was 17-miles long and had a capacity of 60-million gallons per day.  A second ditch was added, the Spreckels Ditch; when completed, it was 30-miles long with a capacity of 60-million gallons per day.

Before World War I, the New Hāmākua, Koʻolau, New Haiku and Kauhikoa ditches were built. A total of ten ditches were constructed between 1879 and 1923.

Over the next thirty years, the two men became agents for nearly a dozen plantations and expanded their plantation interests by acquiring Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company and Kahului Railroad.

In 1883, Alexander and Baldwin formalized their partnership by incorporating their sugar business as the Paia Plantation also known at various times as Samuel T Alexander & Co, Haleakala Sugar Co and Alexander & Baldwin Plantation.

By spring of 1900, A&B had outgrown its partnership organization and plans were made to incorporate the company, allowing the company to increase capitalization and facilitate expansion.

The Articles of Association and affidavit of the president, secretary and treasurer were filed June 30, 1900 with the treasurer of the Territory of Hawaiʻi. Alexander & Baldwin, Limited became a Hawaiʻi corporation, with its principal office in Honolulu and with a branch office in San Francisco.

Shortly after, in 1904, Samuel Alexander passed away on one of his adventures. While hiking with his daughter to the edge of Victoria Falls, Africa, he was struck by a boulder. Seven years later, Baldwin passed away at the age of 68 from failing health.

After the passing of the founders, Alexander & Baldwin continued to expand their sugar operations by acquiring additional land, developing essential water resources and investing in shipping (Matson) to bring supplies to Hawaii and transport sugar to the US Mainland markets.

A&B was one of Hawaiʻi’s five major companies (that emerged to providing operations, marketing, supplies and other services for the plantations and eventually came to own and manage most of them.)  They became known as the Big Five.

Hawaiʻi’s Big Five were: C Brewer (1826;) A Theo H Davies (1845;) Amfac – starting as Hackfeld & Company (1849;) Castle & Cooke (1851) and Alexander & Baldwin (1870.)

What started off as partnership between two young men, with the purchase of 12 acres in Maui, has grown into a corporation with $2.3 billion in assets, including over 88,000 acres of land.

(In 2012, A&B separated into two stand-alone, publicly traded companies – A&B, focusing on land and agribusiness and Matson, on transportation.)

A&B is the State’s fourth largest private landowner, and is one of the State’s most active real estate investors.  It’s portfolio includes a diversity of projects throughout Hawaiʻi, and a commercial property portfolio comprising nearly 8-million square feet of leasable space in Hawaiʻi and on the US Mainland.

It is also the owner and operator of the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar plantation, the state’s largest farm, with 36,000 acres under cultivation and Hawaiʻi’s sole producer of raw and specialty sugar.  (Information here is from Alexander & Baldwin.)

The image shows the sugar harvesting in the early years.  (A&B)  In addition, I have added some other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook  

Follow Peter T Young on Google+  

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn  

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Economy, Prominent People Tagged With: Hawaii, Maui, Matson, Samuel Alexander, HP Baldwin, East Maui Irrigation, Hawaii Commercial and Sugar, Big 5, Alexander and Baldwin

January 11, 2014 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Nā Wai ʻEhā

Maui is the second largest of the Hawaiian Islands, and covers about 730 square miles.  Maui consists of two separate volcanoes with a combining isthmus between the two.

The Mauna Kahālāwai (West Maui Mountain) is probably the older of the two; Haleakala (East Maui) was last active about 1790, whereas activity on West Maui is wholly pre-historic.

Nā Wai ʻEhā (“The Four Great Waters”) – Waiheʻe River, Waiehu Stream, Wailuku (ʻĪao) Stream and Waikapū Stream are in central Maui.

The headwaters of Waine’e and ‘Īao extend to or near the summit of the Mauna Kahālāwai at Pu‘u Kukui and are among the largest streams, in terms of stream flow, on Maui.

The headwaters of N & S Waiehu Streams are cut off from the summit area by the valleys of Waine’e River to the north and ‘Īao Stream to the south, they later merge to form Waiehu Stream.  Waikapū Stream is the only Nā Wai ‘Ehā stream that drains to the southern coast of Maui.

The abundance of water in Nā Wai ʻEhā enabled extensive loʻi kalo (wetland kalo) complexes, including varieties favored for poi-making such as “throat-moistening lehua poi.” (CWRM)

Nā Wai ʻEhā once “comprised the largest continuous area of wetland taro cultivation in the islands.” Its “complex agricultural system of wetland kalo cultivation,” together with the abundant protein sources in the streams and nearshore waters, supported one of the largest populations on Maui.

The fertile kalo lands, complex system of irrigation ʻauwai (ditches) and abundant fresh water from Nā Wai ʻEhā sustained Hawaiian culture for 1,000-years.

In addition to extensive agricultural production, other practices thrived in Nā Wai ʻEhā, including the gathering of upland resources, such as thatch and ti, and protein sources from the streams, including ʻoʻopu (goby fish,) ʻōpae (shrimp) and hihiwai (snail.)

The waters of Nā Wai ʻEhā were renowned for the practice of hiding the piko, or the umbilical cord of newborn babies. “(T)he spring ʻEleile contained an underwater cave where the people of the area would hide the piko of their babies after birth.”  This practice affirms the individual’s connection to the land.

The practice of hiʻuwai, also known as kapu kai, often occurred here around the time of makahiki, when individuals “would go into the rivers or into the ocean in order to do a cleansing for the new year”.

This type of cleansing, which required immersion in the water, was also conducted “before you start or end certain ceremonies”.  For ceremonies dedicated to Kāne, “having a hiʻuwai in a stream magnifies the mana”.

Given the makeup of the Nā Wai ʻEhā, Waiheʻe River and ‘Īao historically would have flowed continuously to the coast; Waiehu Stream would have flowed continuously to the coast at least 95 percent of the time; and Waikapū Stream would have flowed continuously to the coast less than half of the time.  (USGS)

But the streams were diverted, to quench the thirst of the thirsty sugar plantations.

By 1866, a letter published in the Hawaiian language newspaper Nūpepa Kūʻokoʻa lamented “the current condition of once cultivated taro patches being dried up by the foreigners, where they are now planting sugar cane”.

These diversions and ditch systems historically supplied two sugar plantations: Wailuku Sugar and Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company (HC&S,) which belonged to the plantation-era “Big Five” companies C. Brewer and Alexander & Baldwin, respectively.

Wailuku Sugar was organized in 1862 by James Robinson, Thomas Cummins, J Fuller and agent C Brewer.  In 1878, through his friendship with King Kalākaua, Claus Spreckels secured a lease of 40,000-acres of land on Maui and by 1882 he founded the Hawaiian Commercial Company (later known as Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company – HC&S.)

This quickly became the largest and best-equipped sugar plantation in the islands (in 1898, Spreckels lost control of HC&S and Alexander & Baldwin took over as agents at that time.)

Water wars have been waged way back.

Back in 1882, Wailuku Sugar and Spreckels fought over portions of the ditch system and purported rights to the water in the streams.

Lately, complaints were filed by downstream users arguing public trust, traditional and cultural practices (including kalo farming.)  In part, the diversions and ditches are capable of diverting all of the dry-weather flow available at the intakes – and often times, downstream conditions resulted in dry streambeds.

More recently (March 13, 2008,) the State Commission on Water Resource Management designated Nā Wai ʻEhā a surface water management.

In addition, on August 15, 2012, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court vacated a Water Commission decision and that included instream flow standards.

Instream Flow Standard is “a quantity or flow of water or depth of water which is required to be present at a specific location in a stream system at certain specified times of the year to protect fishery, wildlife, recreational, aesthetic, scenic, and other beneficial instream uses.”

The technical language of the law is complicated; I simplify this to say that the instream flow standard allows a stream to be a stream.  (Lots of information here is from associated court papers and descriptions.)

The image shows a map of Nā Wai ʻEhā (CWRM.)  I added a couple of other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook  

Follow Peter T Young on Google+ 

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: General, Hawaiian Traditions, Place Names Tagged With: Waihee, Waikapu, Spreckels, Kahalawai, Commission on Water Resource Management, Hawaii, Instream Flow Standards, Maui, Waiehu, Iao, Hawaii Commercial and Sugar, West Maui Mountain, Wailuku

Images of Old Hawaiʻi

People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

Info@Hookuleana.com

Connect with Us

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent Posts

  • For the Birds
  • James Otis
  • Raising the United States Flag
  • Kamehameha III’s Secret Agreement of US Annexation
  • Daguerreotype
  • Wahiawā
  • Math’s Life Lessons

Categories

  • General
  • Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance
  • Buildings
  • Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings
  • Hawaiian Traditions
  • Military
  • Place Names
  • Prominent People
  • Schools
  • Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks
  • Economy
  • Voyage of the Thaddeus
  • Mayflower Summaries
  • American Revolution

Tags

August Hering Charles Sheldon Judd Chief D-Day Dentistry DOE Dredging Ephraim Weston Clark Floating Island Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary Hawaii Invasive Species Council HECO Henry AP Carter Henry Martyn Whitney John Webber Joseph Boyd Poindexter Kalaniopuu Kanaina Ka Wai O Pele Keei Kini Popo Lava Tube Liliuokalani Educational Society Makai Arterial Makanau Makaweli Molokai Oklahoma Paia High School PASH Patricia Jennings Pohaku O Lanai Ponoholo Ranch Puuhonua Richard Boone Robert Boyd St Catherine's St John Vianney Termite Palace Territorial Hospital Waikiki Roughwater Swim Waikolu Yale Yokohama Specie Bank Zephaniah Swift Spalding

Hoʻokuleana LLC

Hoʻokuleana LLC is a Planning and Consulting firm assisting property owners with Land Use Planning efforts, including Environmental Review, Entitlement Process, Permitting, Community Outreach, etc. We are uniquely positioned to assist you in a variety of needs.

Info@Hookuleana.com

Copyright © 2012-2021 Peter T Young, Hoʻokuleana LLC

 

Loading Comments...