Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

ʻAuwai

In pre-Captain Cook times, kalo (taro) played a vital role in Hawaiian culture. It was not only the Hawaiians’ staple food but the cultivation of kalo was at the very core of Hawaiian culture and identity.

Taro can be cultivated by two very different methods. Upland, or dryland, taro is planted in non-flooded areas that are fed by rainfall. Lowland, or wetland, taro is grown in water-saturated fields.

The early Hawaiians probably planted kalo in marshes near the mouths of rivers. Over years of progressive expansion of kalo lo‘i (flooded taro patches) up slopes and along rivers, kalo cultivation in Hawai‘i reached a unique level of engineering and sustainable sophistication.

Kalo lo‘i systems are typically a set of adjoining terraces that are typically reinforced with stone walls and soil berms. Wetland taro thrives on flooded conditions, and cool, circulating water is optimal for taro growth, thus a system may include one or more ʻauwai (irrigation ditches) to divert water into and out of the planting area.  (McElroy)

Most important in the system of distribution of water for application to the soil were the main ditches diverting the water from natural streams.

Each of these large ʻauwai was authorized and planned by the King or by one or more chiefs or konohiki whose lands were to be watered thereby, the work of excavation being under the direction of the chief providing the largest number of men.  (Perry, Hawaiʻi Supreme Court)

The ʻauwai construction and maintenance formed foundations around which an entire economy, class system, and culture functioned.  The ʻauwai, lo‘i and the taro plant’s mythical and spiritual connections in Hawaiian society influenced individual and social activity within the ahupua‘a.  (Handy, HART)

Taro cultivation affected many aspects of Hawaiian life: the labor required to build and maintain the ʻauwai; the shared water rights; and tributes to the Mō‘ī and to the chiefs (Ali‘i.)  (Handy, HART)

All ʻauwai had a proper name, and were generally called after either the land, or the chief of the land that had furnished the most men, or had mainly been instrumental in the inception, planning and carrying out of the required work. All ʻauwai tapping the main stream were done under the authority of a konohiki of an ahupuaʻa.  (Nakuina, Thrum)

ʻAuwai were generally dug from makai – seaward or below – upwards. The konohiki who had the supervision of the work having previously marked out where it would probably enter the stream, the diggers worked up to that point.

The different representatives in the ahupuaʻa taking part in the work furnished men according to the number of kalo growers on each land.  (The quantity of water awarded to irrigate the loʻi was according to the number of workers and the amount of work put into the building of the ʻauwai.)

Dams that diverted water from the stream were a low loose wall of stones with a few clods here and there, high enough only to raise water sufficiently to flow into the ʻauwai, which should enter it at almost a level. No ʻauwai was permitted to take more water than continued to flow in the stream below the dam (i.e. no more than half.)

Use of the water was regulated by time increments, which varied from a few hours each day for a small kalo patch to two or three days for a kalo plantation. By rotation with others on the ʻauwai, a grower would divert water from the ʻauwai into his kalo. The next, in turn, would draw off water for his allotted period of time.  (KSBE)

The ʻauwai primarily existed to support taro cultivation.   Other crops, such as sweet potatoes, bananas or sugar cane, were regarded as dry land crops dependent on rainfall.  Sugar cane and bananas were almost always planted on loʻi banks (kuauna) to receive moisture seeping through.  (Nakuina, Thrum)

ʻAuwai varied in size and structure depending on the number and size of lo‘i they irrigated. In smaller lo‘i, water could be directed from one terrace into the next below it.

However, larger lo‘i required individual ʻauwai capable of carrying more water. In more complex systems, these might be branches from another ʻauwai, often connected to the same source.  (HART)

An early description of ʻauwai is from explorer Nathaniel Portlock, noting the Kauaʻi ʻauwai in 1787, “This excursion gave me a fresh opportunity of admiring the amazing ingenuity and industry of the natives in laying out the taro and sugar-cane grounds …”

“… the greatest part of which are made up on the banks of the river, with exceeding good causeways made with stones and earth, leading up the valleys to each plantation; the taro beds are in general a quarter of a mile over, dammed in, and they have a place on one part of the bank, that serves as a gateway.”

“When the rains commence, which is in the winter season, the river swells with the torrents from the mountains, and overflowed their taro-beds; and when the rains are over, and the rivers decrease, the dams are stopped up, and the water kept in to nourish the taro and sugar-cane during the dry season …”

“… the water in the beds is generally about one foot and a half, or two feet, over a muddy bottom … the taro also grows frequently as large as a man’s head.”

Another early description of ʻauwai and loʻi is from Otto von Kotzebue, a Russian naval officer who was in the Islands in 1816, “The artificial taro fields, which may justly be called taro lakes, excited my attention. … I have seen whole mountains covered with such fields, through which water gradually flowed; each sluice formed a small cascade which ran … into the next pond, and afforded an extremely picturesque prospect.”

The burden of maintaining the ditches fell upon those whose lands were watered; failure to contribute their due share of service rendering the delinquent hoaʻāina (tenant) subject to temporary suspension or to entire deprivation of their water rights or even to total dispossession of their lands.  (YaleLawJournal)

In some ʻauwai, not all of the water was used; after irrigating a few patches the ditch returned the remainder of the water to the stream.  (YaleLawJournal)

One notable ʻauwai, with water still flowing through it (however, the loʻi kalo is long gone) is in Nuʻuanu.  After damage to the ʻauwai system during the battle of Nuʻuanu, Kamehameha moved to quickly restore the valley’s agriculture production, summoning Kuhoʻoheiheipahu Paki to rebuild the irrigation system.

“(I)n three days, (Paki) rallied several hundred men to construct the tremendous Nuʻuanu irrigation system which supplies the numerous pondfields (from Luakaha, near Kaniakapūpū to around what is now Judd Street) …this irrigation system is known even today as the Paki ʻauwai.” (Hawaiʻi Legislature)

Among other loʻi along its course, Paki ʻAuwai served the loʻi kalo of Queen Emma at Hānaiakamālama (the Queen’s Summer Palace.)

The image shows a portion of the rock-lined Paki ʻAuwai in Nuʻuanu (just below Kaniakapūpū (you take the same trail to see each.))

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sailamokus

There is historical evidence suggesting that Hawaiians began moving to the US mainland as early as the late-1700s for economic survival.

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.

When British and American ships, lured by the fur trade, entered into the Pacific in the wake of Captain Cook at the close of the eighteenth century, young Hawaiian men were regularly recruited off the Islands as deckhands.  Thousands of shipped out as seamen, called “sailamokus”.

“Hawaiian men proved to be valuable sailors who were at home in the seas and their excellent swimming skills had a variety of uses, such as repairing hulls underwater and dislodging stuck anchors.” (Brown)

The whaling industry had a major effect upon Hawaiian commerce and trade. As the Northwest fur trade decreased and sandalwood supplies and values dropped, the whaling industry began to fill the economic void. Hawaiians took to the sea and sailors traveled all over the world.

Thousands of Hawaiians shipped out as seamen aboard the whaling ships, so many that the crews were often half Hawaiian.  (NPS)  “Sandwich Island crew … are complete water-dogs, therefore very good in boating. It is for this reason that there are so many of them on the coast of California; they being very good hands in the surf.”

“They are also quick and active in the rigging, and good hands in warm weather; but those who have been with them round Cape Horn, and in high latitudes, say that they are useless in cold weather. In their dress they are precisely like our sailors.”

“In addition to these Islanders, the vessel had two English sailors, who acted as boatswains over the Islanders, and took care of the rigging.” (Dana, 1840)

Historians suggest “that young Hawaiian males left Hawai’i as workers on whaling ships and traveled to China, Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. mainland. In addition, many ventured into the Pacific Northwest territory, worked in the fur trade, and ended up settling in those areas.” (pbs-org)

“Hawaiian sailors were known for their seamanship and swimming abilities and made desirable recruits for the whaling captains, so much so that the Hawaiian government began to regulate this recruitment and passed laws requiring bonds to ensure the sailors’ return to the islands as early as the 1830s.”

“The demographic decline due to foreign diseases (an additional import of the early western whalers) made it all the more important to ensure the return of local sailors to Hawai‘i. Nonetheless, the role of Kānaka maoli in the American whaling fleet continued to increase. By 1871, Kanaka sailors made up almost half of the entire whaling crews in Alaska.”  (Van Tilburg, NOAA)

Other Native Hawaiians landed in Nantucket, New Bedford, and nearby ports. By the 1830s, Nantucket whalers employed about fourteen hundred seamen, including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Four or five hundred men arrived or departed annually.

At least six sailor boarding houses operated during the 1820 to 1860 period when Native Hawaiian seamen frequented Nantucket.

At least one house, near Pleasant Street in Nantucket’s New Guinea section, primarily or exclusively boarded Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and a sign identified William Whippy’s establishment as the “William Whippy Canacka Boarding-House.” 

These whalers, on countless other New England voyages with Hawaiian crews, contributed to the economic and social history there. They shared their cultural traditions, languages, skills and knowledge with New England’s citizens and with each other aboard the whaleships.  (Lebo)

“Hawaiians also migrated to Yolo County, California to participate in the Gold Rush and created their own Kanaka Village. There is evidence that Hawaiians settled across California in the late-1800s and even intermarried with Native Americans.”

“Many scholars speculate that Hawaiians migrated to the mainland in order to gain more economic opportunity and to flee from the dramatic Westernization that was changing the face of Hawai’i.” (pbs-org)

The American Civil War, the discovery of petroleum, and the decimation of the whales ended the reign of the whalers in the Pacific by about 1876. Whaling had been ‘an economic force of awesome proportions in these Islands for more than forty years’. (NPS)

Of course, this summary only highlights some of the early outmigration of Hawaiians from Hawaiʻi.  Recent decades have seen a flurry of movement of Hawaiians (and others) from Hawaiʻi to the continent.  (Some areas on the continent show over 100% increases decade-by-decade in the number of Hawaiians living there.)

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Mutiny on the Globe

Hawai‘i’s whaling era began in 1819 when two New England ships became the first whaling ships to arrive in the Hawaiian Islands.   At that time, whale products were in high demand; whale oil was used for heating, lamps and in industrial machinery; whale bone was used in corsets, skirt hoops, umbrellas and buggy whips.

Formerly whales were principally taken in the North Seas, the largest were generally found around Greenland, some of them measuring ninety feet in length.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

However, rich whaling waters were discovered near Japan and soon hundreds of ships headed for the area.  The central location of the Hawaiian Islands between America and Japan brought many whaling ships to the Islands.  Whalers needed food and the islands supplied this need from its fertile fields.

So plentiful were the whales, and taken with such facility, that the ships employed were not sufficient to carry home the oil and bone, and other ships were often sent to bring home the surplus quantity.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

Among the early whalers it was customary to have six boats to a ship and six men to a boat, besides the harpooner. What at that time was considered an improved method in killing whales consisted in hurling the harpoon.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

The ropes attached to the harpoon used to be about 1,200 feet long and in some cases all the lines for the six boats were fastened together and ran out by one whale, the animal descending in nearly a perpendicular line from the surface.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

Initially, it was customary to bring only the blubber, and instead of boiling the oil out and putting it into casks on board, the fat of the whale was cut up into suitable pieces, pressed hard in tubs carried out for the purpose, and in this situation was the return cargo received at home.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

One such whaler, the ship “Globe” of Nantucket, sailed out of Edgartown, Massachusetts, on December 20, 1822, on a whaling voyage around Cape Horn.

With a complement of 21 men under the command of Captain Thomas Worth, she set sail on a whaling expedition to the Pacific. After finding success in the “off Japan” whaling grounds the Globe arrived in Honolulu for provisioning.

There, “six men ran away in the Sandwich Islands, and one was discharged.”  Captain Worth took on seven new crew, four of whom were Silas Payne, John Oliver, William Humphries and Joseph Thomas.

After two years out on that whaling voyage, on the night of January 25, 1824, four of the crew, mutinied near Fanning Island, 900 miles south of the Hawaiian Islands.

Samuel B Comstock, a 22-year-old harpooner, was the instigator of the mutiny.  Sometime prior to the mutiny, he had major quarrels with Captain Worth.

After murdering the captain and first mate, who were both asleep at the time of the assault, the mutineers proceeded to attack the second and third mates, who were in the cabin.  Then they took the ship into Badu Island (Mulgrave Island, north of Queensland, Australia.)

On February 14, the mutineers took the Globe to Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands. A few of the mutineers started to suspect Comstock intended to destroy the Globe and kill the rest of crew.

Within days of settling on Mili Atoll, Comstock was murdered by his fellow mutineers.

In an atmosphere of distrust existing between the mutineers, Payne and Oliver made an error in judgment of sending Gilbert Smith to secure the Globe.

Smith and 5 other crew (not part of the mutiny) seized the Globe and escaped (included in this group was George Comstock, Sam’s younger brother,) eventually arriving at Valparaiso, Chile, where they were brought into custody by the American consul. The Globe was fitted out and returned to Nantucket, arriving in November 1824.

Back on the Atoll, repeated injuries to the natives on the part of Silas Payne (the second in command of the mutineers at the time of the outbreak, and the murderer of his associate conspirator, Comstock,) so incensed them that one after another of the crew were slain (one of the mutineers, William Humphries, was hung by the others.)

Out of ten castaways on Mili Atoll, only Cyrus M Hussey and William Lay survived.  Half-prisoners and half-adoptees of the natives these two survived for twenty-two months; they were rescued on November 21, 1825 by US schooner Dolphin, commanded by Lieutenant John Percival.

(You may recall that besides bringing the mutineers to justice, Percival (aka “Mad Jack” Percival) had been sent to the Pacific to enforce the settlement of debts owed by Hawaiʻi’s ruling chiefs to American sandalwood dealers.  He caused an incident after his arrival there on January 16, 1826, the chiefs had not only forbidden the women to swim out to the ships, but had restricted the sale of alcohol – it became known as the Battle of Honolulu.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

“Some Kind of Mettle”

After a brief stay in the Islands, in 1839, John Augustus Sutter, a Swiss seeking his fortune in America, brought a small group of native Hawaiians with him to California.

They worked for him and eventually intermarried with local native American families. They settled in the area of Vernon, which is now called Verona, where the Feather River flows into the Sacramento River in South Sutter County. (co-sutter-ca-us)

At the time of Sutter’s arrival in California, the territory had a population of only 1,000 Europeans, in contrast with 30,000 Native Americans. At the time, it was part of Mexico and the governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, granted him permission to settle.

In order to qualify for a land grant, Sutter became a Mexican citizen in 1840; the following year, he received title to about 49,000-acres and named his settlement New Helvetia, or “New Switzerland.” He called his compound Sutter’s Fort.

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, using a name then-common to describe Hawaiian workers, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas.”  They built the first settlers’ homes in Sacramento – hale pili (grass shacks) made with California willow and bamboo.

Sutter later ordered that a sawmill be built in the Coloma Valley on the South Fork of the American River, about 50-miles from the fort. In the process of deepening the millrace (the channel of water where the flow of current causes the mill wheel to turn,) James Marshall made an important discovery that changed things, a lot.

On January 24, 1848, a young Virginian named Henry William Bigler recorded in his diary: “This day some kind of mettle was found in the tail race that looks like gold first discovered by James Martial, the boss of the Mill.”  (csun)

Marshall and Sutter tried their best to keep the discovery of gold quiet until the construction of Sutter’s mill was completed; the news leaked out, and the stampede began.  Some 300,000-people came to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.

“Forty-Niner” has become the collective label for those who participated in the famous California Gold Rush. Quite a few people arrived in 1848, and many came after 1849; however, it was the year 1849 which witnessed the large wave of gold-seekers.  (Hinckley)

The first large group of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians who came down the Siskiyou Trail.  News reached Hawaiʻi on June 24 on a boat that had departed San Francisco on May 24.

A large proportion of the Americans and Europeans residing in the Islands, along with many native Hawaiians, headed east; as many ships as were available were outfitted for the journey to the Pacific Coast.

When news of the Gold Rush reached Canton in 1848, thousands of young Chinese mortgaged their futures and boarded boats to “Gum Shan,” or “Gold Mountain,” as California became named.  (By 1852, 25,000 Chinese had reached Gold Mountain.)

New Zealanders received the news in November 1848 when an American whaler put into port with several newspapers from Hawaiʻi, and Australians learned about the discoveries a month later.

All of these groups predated Americans arriving from the US East Coast, who had to wait until trading ships from Asia who had stopped in San Francisco or Hawaiʻi either rounded the tip of South America or reached the Isthmus of Panama and crossed it with the news.

Kanaka colonies sprang up throughout the gold country, and California’s first “Good Humor” man, Charlie O’Kaaina, supposedly sold ice cream from his ice wagon in the Sierra foothills. (Magagnini)

Place names like Kanaka Creek in Sierra County and Kanaka Bar in Trinity County tell us of the growing presence of Hawaiians in gold country.  “Hawaiians also migrated to Yolo County, California to participate in the Gold Rush and created their own Kanaka Village.”

“There is evidence that Hawaiians settled across California in the late-1800s and even intermarried with Native Americans. Many scholars speculate that Hawaiians migrated to the mainland in order to gain more economic opportunity and to flee from the dramatic Westernization that was changing the face of Hawaiʻi.”  (pbs-org)

The California Gold Rush drawing Hawaiians to the continent was not its only effect on the Islands; the Hawaiian economy was affected in several ways – good and not-so-good.

Prior to the Gold Rush, supporting the Pacific whaling and trading fleets and trade between the West Coast and Hawaiʻi was the scale of the Hawaiʻi participation.  The scale of that significantly changed with the Gold Rush.

Hawaiʻi was only three to five weeks away, and with the growing population drawn to the gold fields, in addition to provisioning ships, Hawaiʻi farmers were feeding the gold seekers on the continent.

There were some down sides; this also brought a marked increase in the prices of consumer goods, especially food, caused by the great increase in agricultural exports to California, which offered very profitable new markets.  (Rawls)

Likewise, the exodus to the continent created a critical labor shortage in Hawaiʻi, where a sizeable number of sugar plantation workers migrated to the California gold fields.

The parting of workers from the plantations between 1848 and 1853 was so large, Hawaiʻi sugar producers began to seek Chinese immigrants to fill the gap.  (Rawls)

As the California Gold Rush demonstrates, the success of the Island’s economy was largely tied to events that occurred outside the Islands, especially on the continent. The American Civil War’s influence on Hawaiʻi’s fledgling sugar industry is another example of that, starting in 1861.

The Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to fill part of the void left by the absence of then-blockaded southern exports – at elevated prices.

Hawaiian-grown sugar soon replaced much of this southern sugar through the duration of the conflict.  By the end of the war, over thirty extremely prosperous plantations were in operation and expanded to new levels previously unheard of before the war’s commencement.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Koholālele Landing

“The slopes of Mauna Kea Volcano steepen near the town of Ookala and the entire coast between Koholalele Landing and Niu Village is lined by steep sea cliffs ranging 50-300 ft high. Only a few foot trails enable access to the shoreline from the headland bluffs above.”

“Periodically the cliffs become saturated with heavy rainfall and may develop landslides. Several streams cut across the Ookala coastal plain creating deep gulches, beautiful waterfalls, and boulder beaches at their terminus. This region receives moderate to high wave energy from north swell and trade wind waves, limiting reef development.” (USGS)

The sugar companies began clearing the fertile lowlands of Koholālele, like much of Hāmākua, in the mid to late-1800s, to make way for the expansion of sugarcane production on the island of Hawai‘i. (Peralto)  (Koholālele (leaping whale) is a land division and landing, Hāmākua and Mauna Kea, and a former steamer landing for sugar plantations.)

“The entire coast line, excepting where the big gulches break through is sheer cliff of varying height up to 400 ft and behind the land, which is cut by frequent gulches, rises with gentle even slope to the mountain: every available bit of land, from the actual cliff edge to the timber line, is cane covered.”

“A fringe of evergreens will be seen along cliff edge in places. These were planted to protect the cane from the NE trade. No off lying dangers were found in the steamer track: they generally pass close in. The landings however should be approached with caution”. (Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1913)

“At one time there were 26 sugar plantations along the [Hamakua Coast]”. (LA Times) “Over the Big Island, with Hawaiian Air Lines – ‘You’re now flying over the Hamakua coast … said our purser. ‘Below us is the most productive soil in the world.  As much as 300,000 pounds of sugar cane have been grown per acre on these plantations.’”

“He could have added that from an 18-mile square area, slightly larger than that of New York City, Hawaii produces over a 1,000,000 tons of sugar, manufactured in the US,’ pointed out my fellow passenger, Roy Leffingwell, of the Hawaii Sugar Plantations association. ‘It’s Hawaii’s main industry ….’” (Burns; Medford Mail Tribune)

Francis (Nelson) Frazier assembled some ‘Notes’ that her father, Richard Nelson, wrote; they were reminiscences of his years at sea and on the inter-island steamers. “The following excerpt describes the method used to transfer cargo and people ashore along the Hamakua Coast, noted for its steep cliffs.”

“I spent three very happy years on the SS Hawaii with Hilo as the home port, learning how to handle the steamers and the wire at the wire landings. Our duty in those years was to act as tenders to the Matson sailing ships.”

“There were two steamers, the Hawaii and the Kaiulani, in this trade, and our work was to tow the sailing ships in and out of Hilo Bay and to place them at their moorings under the direction of the Pilot.”

“We then came alongside the sailing ships and took their cargo on board for the various ‘outside’ plantations and then brought sugar in from those plantations and delivered it to the ships to take to San Francisco.”

“Most of the places we went to had wire landings, but there were a few derrick landings, which were mostly disliked by the Captain and crews of the steamers as they were more dangerous in rough weather than the wire landings, which could be worked in most any kind of weather except when the wind was from the north, when even they were unsafe.”

“The coast of Hawaii known as the Hamakua Coast was a stretch of about 50 miles running north from Hilo to {Kukuihaele]. The shore was a continuous bluff from 100 to 400 feet above sea level.”

“All the plantations were on the top of the bluff, and the reason for the wire landings was that the shore line was so rough and dangerous for boat work most of the time that some means had to be found to enable the loading to be carried on in all kinds of weather.”

“The idea of loading by wire was imported from the Pacific Coast when lumber from the redwood forests had been shipped that way for many years. As the trade winds blow almost constantly from the east north east all the landings and moorings were laid out so that the steamer would lay head to the wind and sea.”

“There were four (4) mooring buoys with heavy anchors and chains to them at all wire landings, and a small buoy with a light chain only a few feet longer than the depth of water was fastened to the end of the sea wire, which lay on the sea bottom all the time when there was no steamer using it.”

“There was also a permanent wire from the top of the bluff leading down to an anchor not very far from the shore. This wire was used when first getting the hauling rope from shore. A weight was slid down this wire with the end of the hauling rope attached to it.”

“The ship’s boat would go in to this wire and pick up the end of the hauling rope that came down from the top of the bluff. This end they took back to the ship, and this way the connection with the landing was established.”

“In coming to a wire landing, the steamer was taken in between the two head buoys and one or two anchors let go and enough chain payed out to allow the ship to turn around head to the wind, with the small ‘wire buoy’ alongside the off shore side of the ship near the fore hatch.”

“The ship was then approximately in the right position but not yet secured, so the two boats with the stern lines already coiled in them were lowered, and the stern lines (2) run to the buoys and secured there. When all was connected up and ready the work began.”

“If we had cargo, that was first hoisted up out of the hold and landed on deck or on the half of the hatch cover that was always left on for the crew to stand on. “

“After all the cargo was ashore, the process was reversed and the [bagged] sugar was sent down on the carriage and landed on the ship’s hatch and then tumbled down for the rest of the crew to stow away in the hold.” ((Nelson) Frazier)

“There is an excellent landing at Koholalele Landing, small boats lie at the derrick pier and have a lee from the NE trade. This is an excellent place for getting ashore since the inclined c.r. cut offers easy access to top of cliffs. One mooring buoy, red can.”

“There is a rumor that this landing will be abandoned, because the railroad is going to handle all freight. The Hilo Railroad traverses entire sheet.”

“Paauilo is the terminus. there is no present intention of extending it farther, one reason being that the plantations beyond could give no business, having contracts with the Inter Island SS Co for several years ahead.” (Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1913)

The old Koholālele Landing on the Hāmākua was once considered for use as an emergency airplane landing field. This land, owned by the Hāmākua Mill Company, was not particularly good cane land and that Company was agreeable to exchanging it for other territorially-owned property. (Territorial Aviation Commission, March 4, 1931)

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