Jack London

July 14, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hobrons

Two brothers (Thomas Henry Hobron (1823-1889) & Ebenezer Coit Hobron (1834-1921)) came to Hawaii in about 1853 or ‘54, from New London, Conn. Thomas’ son, Thomas William Hobron, also has a role in this story.

Captain Thos. H Hobron “laid his schooner on the Kahului route and became identified with the East Maui trade, making his home at Grove Ranch, where he started the sugar plantation known by that name, which [later] consolidated with the Paia Sugar Company.”

Grove Ranch was on 3,000 acres in Hāli‘imaile and Pā‘ia; his Waihe‘e sugar mill was managed by Samuel Alexander and his field boss is H.P. Baldwin. (Orr)

“From his schooners and plantation he accumulated quite a large fortune. … [H]e engaged very successfully in the codfish and salmon expeditions sent out from San Francisco to the North Pacific. …”

On July 17, 1879 Captain Thomas H Hobron ran the first train line from Kahului to Wailuku; the 3-foot-wide was eventually extended to over 15 miles in length along the north coast to Kuiaha with a number of branch lines. (AASHTO) The Kahului & Wailuku Railroad began passenger service on Maui on, thus initiating the first rail common carrier in the Islands. (Schmitt)

That year, Hobron issued in 12 ½ cent copper tokens bearing the initials ‘T. H. H.’ (as well as G. R. P.) and ‘12 ½’ on the obverse. In the same year he also issued a 2 ½ cent copper token, intended also for use on the Kahului railroad.

Within a year or two the line was extended eastward from Kahului to Pāʻia. The enterprise was incorporated July 1, 1881 as the Kahului Railroad Company.

The Kahului station was located southeast of the harbor at Hobron Point (the east side of the harbor (which includes Pier 1)) and tracks extended through Spreckelsville as well as to the sugar mill at Puʻunene.

Hobron, who also was postmaster of Kahului, allowed mail to be sent free over the railroad. Later, in 1884, a subsidy of $25 per month was paid for hauling mail. Mail carried on the railroad was in closed bags for delivery to postmasters along the route. Probably loose letters were also carried. (HawaiianStamps)

Thomas H Hobron’s son, Thomas William Hobron, was “a druggist by profession”. (HnlAdv, March 21, 1922) “Hobron, Newman & Co were incorporated September 21, 1891. TW Hobron and ER Newman, the principals, went to San Francisco in the following October, and procured a complete stock of drugs, chemicals toilet articles, etc.”

“They opened for business on November 16^th, 1891, in a handsome new store at Fort and King sts. All car lines pass the store, so that there is not a more central stand in Honolulu.”

“On May 31^st, 1894, TW Hobron purchased ER Newman’s stock. The name of the corporation changed to Hobron Drug Co in August [1894]. One feature of the young corporation’s enterprise is its liberal advertising.” (Daily Bulletin, Dec 22, 1894)

Hobron Drug Co (that noted themselves as ‘Cut-rate Druggists,) marketed themselves saying, “Anything bearing our name is a guarantee. We cannot afford not to make good anything bearing our name.”

“We believe in generous dealing. We are going to give the people the most for their money; we are doing it every day. Test us.”

(Hawaiian Star, April 4, 1896)

Thomas William Hobron, allowed Jack London and his wife Charmian to stay in Hobron’s bungalow at Pearl Harbor. In 1906, Jack London announced he was planning a trip on a boat – the Snark – he was to build and do blue-water sailing on a round-the-world cruise. (The Snark was named after one of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poems.)

“‘Honolulu first,’ said London yesterday. ‘After that we are not very definite. Everybody’s in good health, the bourgeoise tradesmen have finally freed us, the boat is staunch, the weather fine. What more a man wants I don’t know.’”

“‘Meet me in Paris,’ called Mrs. Jack London back through the megaphone as the boat disappeared. ‘Isn’t it glorious? Good-by, everybody!” [April 23, 1907]

“On the mainland, before sailing out through the Golden Gate, [Jack and Charmian] made the fortunate acquaintance of one, Mr. Thomas W. Hobron, artist, merchant, good fellow, and citizen of Honolulu, who spoke in this wise: …”

“‘I wonder if you two would care to put up in my little shack on the peninsula? It isn’t much to look at, and there’s only room enough for the two of you; but it’s brimful of Aloha, if you care to use it.’ …”(Jack London in Hawaii, Blunt)

“Folks flocked down to the waterfront to get a glimpse of the little craft which was designed to circumnavigate the globe.”

“A glimpse was all they got, for the Snark gave a line to Young Brothers’ tug Waterwitch and was towed to Pearl Harbor, where she dropped anchor off the Hobron place, and will probably remain there for the best part of the next two months.” (Hawaiian Gazette, May 21, 1907)

“So here are we, blessing good Tom Hobron, as we shall bless him all our years, for the gift of so idyllic a resting-spot after the tumult of our first traverse on the bit of boat yonder. …”

“Leaving the crew aboard to make everything snug, Jack and [Charmian] were carried by launch farther up the Loch to a long wooden foot-pier that leads over the shallow shore-reef to a spacious suburban place where live Albert Waterhouse and his little family.” (Jack London in Hawaii, Blunt)

Thomas Henry Hobron’s brother E Coit Hobron was a little over 18-years of age when they arrived; he became a resident of the Islands for almost 70 years. “He was prominent on Honolulu business circles for many years and was … one of the founders of the Honolulu Brewing & Malting company”. (PCA, Feb 13, 1921)

“The Honolulu Brewing and Malting Company, Limited, which has been in course of formation for several weeks. Has incorporated … A. Hocking, the Senator, is president of the new company. He is also treasurer and Mr E Coit Hobron is secretary.” (PCA, Nov 23, 1898)

A new plant and their first brew came out in 1901; “On Saturday afternoon the offices and buildings of the Honolulu Brewing and Malting Co were thrown open to the general public …”

“… a large crowd of citizens assembled at the brewery, some attracted by curiosity and a desire for knowledge and others actuated by a laudable desire to sample the product”. (Evening Bulletin, June 17, 1901)

“The Honolulu Brewing and Malting Co have a home production – ‘Primo Lager Beer’ – why not order some when it is the equal of any beer brewed?” (Honolulu Republican, June 27, 1901)

“There is not a brewery of its size in the world more thoroughly adapted to the uses designed. There have been mistakes it details and not cost has been spared to make the plant like the beer, ‘Primo.’” (Evening Bulletin, June 17, 1901)

“Following more dredging to widen a path to sea through the reef, the Territorial Government initially constructed the Ala Wai Boat Harbor in 1935 at the mouth of the Canal with purported financial support from the Hobron family, who had purchased land in the Kālia area.” (DLT) Kalia’s Hobron Lane in Waikiki is named for brothers Thomas Henry Hobron and Ebenezer Coit Hobron.

May 3, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

William (Will) Joseph Arthur Goodhue

“When we pause to consider that here is a studious and altogether competent observer who has had 18 consecutive years of constant and exclusive leprosy practice among 800 to 500 patients, constituting one of the largest segregated colonies in the world, we begin to realize the value of his accumulated experience and his opinions as a leprologist.” (Report of the Governor of Hawaii, To the Secretary of the Interior, 1914)

William (Will) Joseph Arthur Goodhue was born October 4, 1868 in Quebec, Canada and graduated from Rush and Dartmouth Colleges in medicine. He went to Hawaiʻi in 1902 as an intern practicing on Kauai.

He fell in love with Alice Saburo Hayashi, aged sixteen, and she ran off with him to Honolulu where he had been offered a job, and he set up a home with her in Pālama. A child (William Goodhue George) was born in 1903; William paid child support, but did not marry Alice.

Dr Goodhue and John D McVeigh assumed the positions of Resident Physician and Superintendent of Kalaupapa. Goodhue was not only a surgeon in the colony, but spent a great deal of time developing new treatments and improving upon old ones; several of his findings were published in medical journals.

In October 1905, Goodhue married Christina “Tina” Meyer, daughter of Henry and Victoria (Bannister) Meyer. Tina was grand-daughter of Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer, prior Superintendent of the Kalawao settlement (Kalaupapa) (who served with Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope.)

Will and Tina had three children, all born at Kalaupapa: William Walter Goodhue, John D. Goodhue and Victoria Goodhue. They were later divorced.

Sister Leopoldina of Kalaupapa said of Goodhue, “We had been in the work nearly fifteen years and until Dr. Goodhue came we had never been assisted by a doctor only a very few times, as they were so much in dread of leprosy.”

“Dr. Goodhue, a true American brave and fearless, plunged into the work with strong will and whole heart doing wonderful work, and it became like a different place.”

The noted author, Jack London, visited the colony, and wrote of his friend, “Dr. Goodhue, the pioneer of leprosy surgery, is a hero who should receive every medal that every individual and every country has awarded for courage and life-saving. … I know of no other place … in the world, where the surgical work is being performed that Dr. Goodhue performs daily.”

“I have seen him take a patient, who in any other settlement or lazar house in the world, would from the complication of the disease die horribly in a week, or two weeks or three – I say, I have seen Dr. Goodhue, many times, operate on such a doomed creature, and give it life, not for weeks, not for months, but for years and years.”

But that is not all. Goodhue used Alice Ball’s treatment of using chaulmoogra oil at Kalaupapa; and out of the five hundred and twelve patients, one hundred and seventy-five have been taking regular treatment. (London)

(Ball isolated the ethyl ester of chaulmoogra oil (from the tree native to India) which, when injected, proved extremely effective in relieving some of the symptoms of Hansen’s disease. Although not a full cure, Ball’s discovery was a significant victory in the fight against a disease.)

Goodhue, speaking to members of the legislature visiting Kalaupapa in 1921, said, “With two years’ chaulmoogra oil treatment, I believe sixty-five per cent of the chronic cases of leprosy on Molokaʻi can be cured. And within ten years, all cases should be cured, and Kalaupapa be abandoned as a leper settlement.”

Once known as leprosy, the disease was renamed after Dr. Gerharad Armauer Hansen, a Norwegian physician, when he discovered the causative microorganism in 1873, the same year that Father Damien volunteered to serve at Kalaupapa.

Goodhue retired in 1925. He had contacted Hansen’s disease and left Hawaiʻi for Shanghai, China, to visit his son who was attending college there (he did not wish to be confined to the leper colony where he had worked all those years on Molokaʻi.)

He lived there on his pension and died of a heart attack on March 17, 1941. He had made the request that if he should not recover to bury him there. (Lots of info here from NPS.)

July 13, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pua Akala

The Polynesian settlers of Hawai‘i brought with them their primary plants used for food and other uses, and four animals, the moa (chicken), ‘īlio (dog), pua‘a (pig), and, inadvertently, the ‘iole (rat). The first three animals were the primary meat of the Hawaiians.

It wasn’t until the arrival of Captain Vancouver in 1793 that cattle were introduced to Hawai‘i. Vancouver dropped one bull and one cow at Kawaihae, and took the remaining five cows to Kealakekua as a gift for King Kamehameha I. The bull died, so it was lucky that a year later Captain Vancouver returned with more cattle, four bulls and eight cows.

A 10 year kapu (taboo) was placed on introduced cattle to feed on the rich green grasslands of Hawai‘i Island. These first cattle, or bullocks, were longhorn cattle and soon grew very wild. The first “ranchers” were bullock hunters, who rode to the uplands of Mauna Kea to shoot cattle or trap them in pits. (DLNR) The meat was used for food and the hides for export.

By the 1820s, there were as many as 30,000 head of cattle on the islands. Historically, agriculture has played a large role in the economy of the island, and the Islands as a whole. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the main industries were sugar cultivation and cattle ranching. (FWS)

As early as 1831, portions of the land on the slopes of Mauna Kea and neighboring forest lands were being worked by Daniel Castle; and, later, by the Castle and Hitchcock brothers for lumber milling and bullock hunting operations. (Kumu Pono)

The Hitchcock brothers, David Howard Hitchcock and Edward Griffin Hitchcock, were the sons of Harvey Rexford and Rebecca (Howard) Hitchcock, American Protestant missionaries who arrived with the 5^th Company of ABCFM missionaries.

In 1875, the Hitchcock brothers purchased the ‘O‘ōkala sugar plantation. In addition, DH Hitchcock was a land surveyor whose work focused not only on parcels of land being sold, but also on land divisions.

In 1883, the Hitchcock brothers built a house at Puakala at the upper boundary of the ahupua‘a, described as being “heavily timbered with ohia, koa, and other Hawaiian woods. Wild cattle and hogs abound in the upper woods”. (Tuggle)

“The house is built almost entirely of Koa sawed in the neighborhood … it was put up by Messrs. Devereaux and Tenny, and was finished in July”. (Pua ‘Ākala Guest Book, Oct 16, 1883)

“But Puakala – what of that? It is situated in the hollow of an amphi-theatre of hills. The hills to the west are mostly barren of trees, but well covered … Puaakala grows the finest of koa wood found on the islands. It is far handsomer than mahogany, some of it beautifully dark, some knotted and some curly.”

“The cattle are fast destroying the koa trees with other trees of the original forests … Of this wood, then, the house is built. The boards were sawed by hand and excellently well done, straight and true.”

“There has been no attempt at planing the lumber except for the doors, and this little handwork sends the polish out and shows the hard smooth grain of the wood. The wide boards are battened to keep out the cold, but cracks enough are left to keep the air always fresh and sweet.”

“At one end of the living-room is a capacious stone fire-place 3 x 4 feet. The opposite end of the building is divided into two sleeping rooms.”

“But the sleeping capacity of the house is not limited to these two bed-rooms, for there is an attic and the living room has lounges and a cot-bed to be used in emergencies. In the fire-place a fire is kept burning day and night.” (Paradise of the Pacific, January 1890)

The private koa-plank cabin known as Pua ‘Ākala (also referred to as Puakala) was used as an aristocratic hunting retreat. (Mills) The cabin was in the area known as Puakala or Kapuakala, a place at the upper edge of Papa‘ikou and is also the name of a watercourse in the area. The Hitchcock family mountain home eventually became known as Pua ‘Ākala Ranch. (Tuggle)

When staying at their mountain home at Pua ‘Ākala, the Hitchcocks hunted wild cattle and pigs, and “the occasional bills of fare written in the [guest] book by appreciative guests always included roast beef, usually pork as well”. (Tuggle)

As described by Kingdom land surveyor, ED Baldwin, “we … headed for Puu Oo, where we found the trail leading around the mountain towards Waimea, which we followed, reaching Puakala – Hitchcock’s mountain house – at five o’clock P.M.”

“This house is sixteen and a half miles in a direct line from Hilo, but about thirty-five by the trail. The Hitchcocks had kindly invited us to make this point our headquarters.”

“What a surprise it was to find, at this distance, such a large comfortable house, built of solid koa, all of which had been sawed out by hand! It was surely mountain luxury to lay off in comfortable rocking chairs before the large, open, old-fashioned fireplace. The elevation at this point is 6,325 feet. …”

“We lived high and well at Puakala; neither did our six cooks spoil the broth; but a specialty from each one helped to swell the bill of fare each meal. One made such fine biscuit, another such soup, another veal pies, another oyster fritters, and another still hit the climax by making akala (wild raspberry) pies.” (Baldwin, Kumupono)

An 1887 entry in the guest book of their mountain house recounts: “A series of hunts ⎯ all successful ⎯ gave the usual spice to the stay here of a short nine days.”

“No thrilling encounters with wild bulls this time but several racy runs after cattle resulted in a total of four bulls, three cows, three yearlings, killed ⎯ two heifers and two small bulls captured ⎯ (one since escaped) with a boar or lean sow shot here and there.” (D Howard Hitchcock, Tuggle)

By the end of the century, there were at least two major ranches in the upper Hakalau Forest area. Kukaiau Ranch was started by Charles Notley in 1887 and was shortly thereafter sold to John M. Horner. By 1929, it covered 35,000 acres between 2,300 to 7,600 feet.

The other ranch was Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō Ranch, which covered 23,000 acres between 5,000 to 6,500 feet. John Baker started the ranch in 1896. (Tuggle)

In 1902, William ‘Willie’ Herbert Shipman secured leases on the lands of Pāpa‘ikou, Makahanaloa and other Hilo District lands, which were incorporated into the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō ranching operation. (Kumu Pono)

WH Shipman was born on December 17, 1854, at Lahaina, Maui to William Cornelius Shipman and Jane Stobie Shipman. Willie’s parents had signed up as missionaries destined for Micronesia. They stopped over at Lāhaina, Maui because his mother was due to deliver within 2 months. His parents then took a mission station in Kaʻū, Hawaiʻi, based in Waiʻōhinu.

In 1920, WH Shipman, leasing Pi‘ihonua and operating out of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, extended his lease on Makahanaloa, and added the uplands of Pauka‘a and Pāpa‘ikou (the Pua‘ākala house and ranch of the Hitchcocks), to his Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō Ranch operation. (Kumu Pono)

Pua ‘Ākala Ranch served as a satellite operation to Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō Ranch. (Roy Shipman Blackshear, Tuggle) WH Shipman, Ltd sold its interest in the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō parcel in the 1970s. (Kumu Pono)

Pua ‘Ākala cabin and the surrounding property are now part of the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge notes “The cabin is well-suited as a location for interpreting the refuge’s forest resources and Hawaii’s unique history.”

“The cabin’s ties with the land survey and divisions, missionary families, politicians, hunting, Koa forests, birds of the forest, and current management strategies provides a wealth of interpretive materials. It is frequently visited by special use permit holders as they lead guided tours on the refuge.” (Messer)

David Howard (D Howard) Hitchcock, son of David Howard (David) Hitchcock and grandson of American missionaries, has ties to Pua ‘Ākala. He is perhaps one of the most important and loved artists from Hawaiʻi. Although born and raised in Hawaiʻi, he left the islands to study art in San Francisco and Paris.

Before his formal training abroad, Hitchcock was inspired by other Volcano School painters and was encouraged by Jules Tavernier to endeavor life as an artist. Hitchcock admits to following Tavernier and Joseph Strong around, ‘like a parasite.’ (NPS HAVO)

“Hitchcock was early hailed as ‘our island painter’ and his early canvases met an enthusiastic reception in Hilo and Honolulu. The Honolulu press commented on them at length. His early work, up to his European trip in 1890, shows great indebtedness to (Jules) Tavernier…” (Forbes)

He spoke fluent Hawaiian and traveled extensively throughout the islands, documenting the natural and cultural features in a sketch book and photographs, which he converted into paintings. During his long career he completed more than 1200 paintings, published 700 photographs. (Messer)

D Howard Hitchcock’s lasting mark at Pua ‘Ākala Ranch was a “charming study of akala berries” on a door which survives, well-preserved, in the possession of one of the Shipman descendants. (Roy Shipman Blackshear, Tuggle)

As described 1922 by Charmian London, wife of Jack London, “Puaakala, roofed in red corrugated iron, was otherwise even more picturesque, more hand-made in appearance than the PuuOO eyrie, even the washing-bowl and the bath-tub being dubbed out of koa. …”

“That night, when I shut the koa panel that was my bedroom door, I became aware that Gauguin had not been the only young painter who left his mark upon wood.”

“I found on the inner side an oil, manifestly not new, of a spray of akala berries and leaves. It had been done … by Howard Hitchcock, who has since attracted much attention by his fine canvases of Hawaii.” (Our Hawaii, London) (D Howard Hitchcock painted it on July 13, 1885.)

Click the following link for additional information on Pua ‘Ākala:

Click to access Pua_Akala-Hakalau_Forest_National_Wildlife_Refuge.pdf

April 10, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Jack London and Waipio

In 1906, Jack London announced he was planning a trip on a boat – the Snark – he was to build and do blue-water sailing on a round-the-world cruise. (The Snark was named after one of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poems.)

“‘Meet me in Paris,’ called Mrs. Jack London back through the megaphone as the boat disappeared. ‘Isn’t it glorious? Good-by, everybody!” [April 23, 1907] Jack and his wife Charmian came to the Islands twice, 1907-09 & 1915-16.

Later, Charmian wrote of Jack London’s impression of the Islands, “Jack, with his unquestionable love of natural beauty,

was ever impressed with man’s lordly harnessing of the outlaw, Nature, leading her by the mouth to perform his work upon earth.”

“‘’Do you get the splendid romance of it?’ he would say. ‘Look what these engineers have done – reaching out their hands and gathering and diverting the storm wastage of streams over the edge of this valley thousands of feet here in the clouds. …”

“[O]ne day, riding in a drizzle, Jack and I happened upon the broad, steep trail of the 2500-foot eastern scarp, into Waipio, and mushed through its mud down into a sunnier level, meeting strings of ascending mules laden with garden produce.”

“An old chronicler referred to the condition of the ‘roads’ hereabout as ‘embarrassing.’ Our horses tried very fractiously to refuse the descent.”

“This was one of the prettiest little adventures we two ever had together, dropping into the sequestered vale that opened wondrously as we progressed to the lovely banks of a wooded river that wound to the sea, widening to meet the surf that thundered upon a two-mile shingle.”

“On the banks of the stream we could see wahines at their washing, and hear the ringing sweet voices of children at play-survivors of a once thick population, as evidenced by remains that are to be found of fish-ponds, taro-patches, and the like. Here the last Hawaiian tapa cloth was made.”

“That same chronicler says: ‘There was something about that valley so lovely, so undisturbed … it seemed to belong to another world, or to be a portion of this into which sorrow and death had never entered.’”

“At the head of this great break in the coast nestles the half-deserted, half-ruined village of Waipio, and behind it there wedges into the floor of the valley a tremendous rock bastion veiled in waterfalls to its mid-hidden summit.”

“A second river curved from beyond its feet, and joined the one that flowed into the sea. We rode on across reedy shallows to a pathway once sacred to the sorcerers, kahunas, the which no layman then dared to profane with his step.”

“Only approaching twilight held us back from the beach trail that leads to a clump of tall coconuts, marking the site of a onetime important temple of refuge in this section of Hawaii, Puuhonua, built as long ago as the thirteenth century by a Kauai king.”

“There is reason to believe that there were several lesser temples in the neighborhood. They do say that Kamehameha the Great was born here in Waipio.”

“One would like to think that first seeing the light of day in so superlatively grand and beautiful a vale might make for greatness!”

“That day, moving along the bases of the cloud-shadowed precipices, we planned happily how we should some day come here, restore one of the abandoned cottages and its garden, and live for a while without thought of time.”

“What a place for quietude and work!”

“For once Jack seemed to welcome the idea of such seclusion and repose. Little as he ever inclined toward folding his pinions for long, Hawaii stayed them more than any other land.”

“‘You can’t beat the Ranch in California – it’s a sweet land,’ he would stanchly defend, ‘but I’d like to spend a great deal of my time down here.’”

“We bemoaned the weather that prevented us from climbing the zig-zag stark above our heads into Waimanu.” (London, Our Hawaii)

November 22, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

John Griffith London (born John Griffith Chaney; January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was raised in Oakland, California, by his spiritualist mother and his stepfather, whose surname, London, he took.

At age 14 he quit school to escape poverty and gain adventure. He explored San Francisco Bay in his sloop, alternately stealing oysters or working for the government fish patrol.

He went to Japan as a sailor and saw much of the United States as a hobo riding freight trains and as a member of Charles T. Kelly’s industrial army (one of the many protest armies of the unemployed, like Coxey’s Army, that was born of the financial panic of 1893). London saw depression conditions, was jailed for vagrancy, and in 1894 became a militant socialist.

London studied magazines and then set himself a daily schedule of producing sonnets, ballads, jokes, anecdotes, adventure stories, or horror stories, steadily increasing his output.

The optimism and energy with which he attacked his task are best conveyed in his autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909). Within two years, stories of his Alaskan adventures began to win acceptance for their fresh subject matter and virile force.

His first book, The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North (1900), a collection of short stories that he had previously published in magazines, gained a wide audience.

Jack and Charmian Kittredge were married in Chicago on November 19, 1905. The London’s settled in Glen Ellen, California at Wake Robin Lodge and began to purchase land on Sonoma Mountain to build their future dream home, the Wolf House.

During the remainder of his life, London wrote and published steadily, completing some 50 books of fiction and nonfiction in 17 years. Although he became the highest-paid writer in the United States at that time, his earnings never matched his expenditures, and he was never freed of the urgency of writing for money. (Britannica)

London spent much of the last year of his life in Hawai‘i. He and his wife Charmian arrived in the winter of 1915–16 and stayed through late July.

London loved Hawai‘i. “The New York dweller must wait till summer for the Adirondacks, till winter for the Florida beach. But in Hawaii, say on the island of Oahu, the Honolulu dweller can decide each day what climate and what season he desires to spend the day in.” (Cosmopolitan, October 16, 1916)

It was the Londons’ second trip to the islands; their original visit in 1907 was the initial leg of their famous two-year voyage on his sailboat, the Snark. During that first trip, Jack fell in love not only with the locale but also its people.

In addition to travel essays, London wrote thirteen stories set in Hawaii, which were collected in two volumes, House of Pride (1912) and the posthumously published On the Makaloa Mat (1919).

One of these tales, “The Water Baby,” was the last story London completed, on October 2, 1916, and it is unlike anything he had previously written.

There is little in the way of action or adventure or human struggle; instead, the narrator John Lakana nurses a hangover while taking part in a largely one-sided conversation with Kohokumu, an old Hawaiian fisherman, whose very name (kumu) suggests a teacher or foundation.

(Lakana was the name given to London by Hawaiians, although, Charmian wrote in her journal, “how London can be transmuted into Lakana is as much a mystery as the mutation of [their friend] Thurston into Kakina.”) (Library of America)

“At any rate, my pleased partner struts as Lakana Kanaka (kanaka means literally man), while meekly I respond to Lakana Wahine.” (Charmian London)

London’s last trip to Hawai‘i lasted eight months during which time he met the Olympiad swimmer and Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana‘ole, Queen Lili‘uokalani and others, before returning to his Glen Ellen ranch in July 1916.

In the last two years of his life, he endured bouts of dysentery, gastric disorders and rheumatism. He and his wife made two extended recuperative trips to Hawaii, but London died on Beauty Ranch on November 22, 1916 at the age of 40.

He is buried at The 1,400-acre Jack London State Historic Park lies in the heart of Sonoma Valley wine country, some 60 miles north of San Francisco in Glen Ellen, California.

Originally, the land was the site of Jack London’s Beauty Ranch, where the author earnestly pursued his interests in scientific farming and animal husbandry.

“I ride out of my beautiful ranch,” London wrote. “Between my legs is a beautiful horse. The air is wine. The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain wisps of sea fog are stealing. The afternoon sun smolders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive.” (Smithsonian)

There is a museum in ‘The House of Happy Walls’ which Charmian built where you will find park information, exhibits and a small sales area. A nearby trail leads to Jack London’s grave and to the remains of ‘Wolf House,’ London’s dream house which was destroyed by fire in 1913. (CA Parks)