Since its founding about 160 years ago, Lihu’e has seen dramatic changes, changes as dramatic as those made to Hawai’i as its political makeup changed from a monarchy to a territory and finally to a state. At Kaua’i entered the
Since its founding about 160 years ago, Lihu’e has seen dramatic changes, changes as dramatic as those made to Hawai’i as its political makeup changed from a monarchy to a territory and finally to a state.
At Kaua’i entered the 1900s, Lihu’e was surrounded by canefields, with most development and homes located along what is today called Rice Street. The street name came from the Rice family. Stately homes were built along Rice Street, which was once informally named “Elite Street.” Proper street names weren’t implemented until the founding of a county government in 1905 following Hawai’i becoming a Territory of the United States, and the election of the first Kaua’i Board of Supervisors in 1906.
One of the most prominent members of the Rice family with close Lihu’e ties was William Hyde Rice. His estate Hale Nani was located in the area where the Lihu’e fire station is today, and his stables were located where the Yoneji Store is today.
The town’s place name is associated with the arrival of the Kamehameha-appointed Kaua’i governor Kaikio’ewa, who built a homestead on the plain above Kalapaki Bay in the mid-1830s. Kaikio’ewa was then an elderly ali’i renowned for his bravery in battle, and for his guardianship of a young Kamehameha III. He won a decisive battle at Kuamo’o near Keahou on the Big Island following the overthrow of the kapu system in 1819 that secured the control of the Hawaiian Kingdom for Liholiho, Kamehameha II.
Ethel Damon, in her two-volume history of Kaua’i published in 1931, said Kaikio’ewa borrowed the place name Lihu’e, which literally means “cold chill,” from a mountainous O’ahu site located along a plain of the Waianae Mountains. A check of an O’ahu archaeology sites book shows the area was on a slope south of today’s Wahiawa and Schofield Barracks. There is no ahupua’a named Lihu’e on Kaua’i or elsewhere, and the town is located in the traditional ahupua’a of Kalapaki.
The potential for sugar growing was the reason the Kaua’i governor was drawn to the upland area then covered with native forest that has become today’s Lihu’e at a time when Koloa Plantation, Hawai’i’s first commercial sugar plantation, was just starting up. He built a compound with thatched buildings including a Protestant church in the area where the Bank of Hawaii and the County of Kaua’i’s round building is today.
In 1849 visiting Boston merchant Henry Augustus Peirce decided Lihu’e was an optimum site for a sugar plantation and helped organize what was to become Lihue Plantation. A company he formed was given a lease on between 2,000 and 3,000 acres of land in in the ahupua’a of Kalapaki that the Kamehameha’s had given to Kekuanaoa, the governor of O’ahu at that time.
Apparently, a walking and horse trail up from Kalapaki Bay to Kaiki’oewa’s settlement and the new plantation was the beginning of today’s Rice Street. After Lihue Plantation was established the trail was expanded when oxen teams pulled wagons of bagged sugar to the coast from the mill situated along Nawiliwili Stream.
Grove Farm was established as a full-fledged sugar plantation in 1865, and its lands were on the Koloa side of Nawiliwili Stream. With the economic boost from having two major plantations, Lihu’e grew and prospered, especially after the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States was signed in 1876 and Kaua’i sugar could enter U.S. markets without a steep tariff.
The Rice family and other sugar growing-related families were able to build comfortable homes along Rice Street, and German families built the first Lutheran church in Hawai’i and homes on German Hill, a hillside area mauka of the LP mill.
The Fairview Hotel was opened by Hungarian immigrant C.W. Spitz in the early 1890s as Kaua’i’s first hotel for visitors and was located where Kalapaki Villas is today. It became the Lihue Hotel after the Rice family took over its operation in the early 1900s, and The Garden Island’s first permanent office was located in a building at the rear of the hotel. Spitz also founded one of Kaua’i’s first auto dealerships, Nawiliwili Garage, which was located near the site of today’s Harbor Mall; it later became Garden Island Motors.
Once Hawai’i became a Territory of the U.S. in 1900 federal funds became available to underwrite roads, harbors and other county projects. The County government met in the old Lihu’e courthouse, located where Kaua’i High School is today, until the opening the historic Kauai County Building in 1914, on land sold to the county by Lihue Plantation. It would be the first county government building erected in all of Hawai’i. The 1910s also saw the development of reinforced concrete buildings along Rice Street. The Bank of Hawaii building was opened in 1913, and was the bank’s first Neighbor Island branch.
While Lihue Plantation’s original company store was located near where today’s Aloha Church is, by the 1910s Kauai Stores was located near today’s intersection of Kuhio Highway and Kaumuali’i Highway. The nearby Tip Top Building was home to the first real movie theater on the island, the Senda photography studio, Ikeda’s barber shop and other commercial enterprises.
Today’s Kaua’i Museum was originally the island’s first library, and opened in 1924.
In the 1920s, The Garden Island newspaper, Garden Island Motors and other businesses opened up along Kuhio Highway, and businesses located near plantation camps in Kapaia moved uptown to Lihu’e as the automobile became a common form of transportation and the community became more mobile.
Over the years Hanapepe and Waimea challenged Lihu’e in the race to become the economic center of Kaua’i. With the opening of Nawiliwili Harbor in 1930 Lihu’e won the race. The U.S. Army chose Nawiliwili as its choice to become the main port of Kaua’i years earlier and federal funds helped to build the breakwater and piers, along with strong support from the Kaua’i Chamber of Commerce and Grove Farm owner G.N. Wilcox who put the money up that seeded the harbor building.
The Garden Island’s front page “flag” featured a sketch of a sun rising above Nawiliwili Harbor for years, partly as a way to help solidify Lihu’e as the commercial center.
Also significant during that decade was Wm Hyde Rice, Ltd. selling land along and around Rice Street, which led to the coming of the Kress Store, Kaua’i’s first mainland-based chain store, and the building of Yoneji Jewelry and Snack Shop and other businesses owned by local entrepreneurs.
In 1938, the Spanish mission architecture U.S. post office and courthouse were opened.
The 1940s saw unionization of the island’s sugar plantations, and sugar workers starting to buy their own homes. The 1950s saw Isenberg Tract subdivision spring up, and with statehood in 1959 also came construction of Wilcox Elementary School.
The 1960s saw the demolition of most of the last of the stately Rice Street homes, with some being moved up to German Hill, the construction of the modern Lihue Plantation Building and Lihue Shopping Center, Lihue Regional State Library, Kauai War Memorial Convention Hall, and the State Building on the site of the Lihu’e armory adjacent to the County Building.
The Garden Island devoted 20 pages to the opening of the Lihue Shopping Center, which is now the Lihue Civic Center and the center of county government. The Big Save Value Center is now the only commercial entity in the center.
Around this time, also, Lihue Plantation sold much of Lihu’e’s downtown commercial land and buildings to the late Harry Weinberg, whose Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Inc. still owns and manages the land much of Lihu’e’s commercial core is built upon.
