Kekaha Sugar lasted 120 years despite challenges

The closing of the Kekaha Sugar Co. on Nov. 17 after over 120 years of

operation ended a plantation famous in the Hawaiian sugar growing industry for

its unique engineering efforts and high yields of sugar cane.

From the

beginning, the plantation needed to:

l Accommodate for extremes in the

elevations of its fields, which ranged from below sea level on the Mana Plain

to the highlands below Koke’e.

l Adjust growing plans for three distinct

types of soils ranging from loamy coastal fields to rich red dirt cliffside

fields.

l And, perhaps above all, provide water to its thirsty fields

located in Kaua’i’s most arid lands.

Kehaka Plantation’s legacy is a rich

one. In the glory days of “King Sugar,” the plantation rarely lost money and

was one of the jewels of Amfac’s crown.

Prior to the development of the

plantation, some of the land was populated by Native Hawaiians who landed

canoes at Poki’i near Kekaha, which was then but a village marked by a stand of

palm trees. Other villages dotted the base of the cliffs that reach sea level

at the base of the once marshy Mana Plain, and Lehua forests grew down to the

bottom of the cliffs.

The plain would flood following heavy rains,

allowing outrigger canoe paddlers to travel freely from Mana to Waimea. Some

taro planters there grew their crop atop unique wooden rafts that could rise

and drop with the floodwaters.

The plantation at Kekaha would grow to

encompass a great semicircle area about 13 miles long and a mile to a

mile-and-a-half wide along this plain. Over 40 miles of irrigation ditches

brought water to its fields.

Kekaha Sugar Co.’s lands have three distinct

characteristics: Low-lying marshlands, some lying below sea level that will

flood if groundwater are not pumped to sea; lands at the base of the foothills

behind the Mana Plain; and mauka fields where cane is grown at elevations up to

1,850 feet.

This setup was unique in Hawai’i, and Kekaha had the

distinction of growing cane on the lowest and the highest fields on any

irrigated plantation.

The labor of Norwegian adventurer and immigrant

Valdemar Knudsen and relatives he brought to Kaua’i from Norway is the seed

that started Kekaha Sugar Co.

Knudsen landed on Kaua’i in 1854 and served

as manager of Grove Farm plantation during its early years under founder Herman

Widemann. However, Knudsen sought a drier climate and received 30-year leases

on Crown lands at Mana and Kekaha in 1856 for $1,500 per year from another

elderly Norwegian named Archer. A tobacco plantation was tried previously.

Knudsen pioneered a homestead near Mana, a ranch he named Waiawa, and

married Annie Sinclair, the daughter of Elisa Sinclair, the matriarch of

Ni’ihau’s Gay-Robinson-Sinclair family.

The signing of the Reciprocity

Treaty of 1876 between the Kingdom of Hawai’i and the United States opened a

huge market for sugar on the mainland. A gold rush of sorts began, with sugar

plantations expanding and opening across the kingdom.

With the end of the

whaling industry in the Pacific the market for his cattle dried up and Knudsen

turned to sugar growing. As he was too old to accomplish the hard work of

building up a plantation, Knudsen enticed a group of his nephews, who were then

all about 20 years old, to Kaua’i. The group included Hendrik Christian

L’Orange, Anton Fayé, Hans Peter Fayé, Christoffer Fayé

and, a bit later, Andreas Fayé.

Knudsen sublet sections of his land

to rice grower Pah Leong or Pah On, who later owned the largest rice mill in

Hawai’i on the site of today’s library in Waimea. In turn, the Chinese grower

provided laborers for the fledgling sugar plantation.

Knudsen saw the

potential and partnered with L’Orange in planting durable Lahaina variety sugar

cane near Kekaha.

Knudsen drained about 50 acres of the marsh along Mana

Plain and planted the first crop of commercially grown sugar cane at Kekaha in

1878.

L’Orange married Caroline “Caro” Fayé, H.P. Fayé’s

sister and Knudsen’s niece, and left Kaua’i in 1880 – after selling out to

Meyer and Anton Fayé – to start a sugar plantation on Maui. He later

returned to Norway to recruit workers for Hawai’i plantations. The first crop

was bought out in 1880 when it matured by Anton Fayé and W.

Meyer.

In 1880, German immigrant planter Paul Isenberg, who prospered

through his success at Lihu’e Plantation, joined forces on other sugar lands at

Kekaha with George Norton Wilcox, the missionary son who succeeded with his

plantation at Grove Farm.

Isenberg and Wilcox hoped to provide similar

opportunities to their respective set of brothers. Isenberg, with his brothers

Carl and Otto, and Wilcox, with his brothers Sam and Albert, built the original

mill at Kekaha under the name Kekaha Sugar Co. The Germans, Norwegians and

American Protestant missionary sons got along very well, and their partnerships

endured through their lifetimes.

Knudsen agreed to provide cane for the

mill, and Otto Isenberg became mill operator. The German firm Hoffschlaeger Co.

served as the first agent, with H. Hackfeld & Co. taking over in

1887.

By 1886, three firms were involved in growing and processing sugar

cane at Kekaha: Meyer & Kruse, who cultivated lands around the town of

Kekaha; Valdemar Knudsen’s nephew, H. P. Fayé, who cultivated land at

Mana under a lease from Knudsen; and the Kekaha Mill Co., under Otto

Isenberg.

H.P. Fayé had negotiated his lease for Knudsen’s last

unleased piece of land – stony acreage with poor soil – using capital borrowed

from Paul Isenberg.

Anton Fayé left Kaua’i in 1884 to start an

orange plantation in Florida, where he lost his shirt in a citrus freeze and

died.

Much of the plan for the new plantation was drawn up by H.P.

Fayé. He became the first manager partly because of his skill in

enticing investors for a plantation that depended on renewing a lease for its

lands every 20 years. Because of this, Kekaha was initially seen as a shaky

investment with a need for great amounts of capital to build a non-resaleable

infrastructure of canals, pumps, water systems and other facilities needed to

overcome its inherent physical disadvantages.

These pioneering years were

rough ones for the growers who lacked the abundant water supply found on the

verdant east side of Kaua’i. Besides about 20 inches of rainfall a year, mostly

in winter months, they relied on water drawn from springs around Kekaha through

the use of steam-driven pumps.

In 1898, the growers came together to

incorporate, forming Kekaha Sugar Co. Ltd. The 11 pioneer sugar growers

included H. P. Fayé, Otto Isenberg, F. W. Glade, F. W. Meier, E. Kruse,

A. S. Wilcox, J. F. Hackfeld, Paul Isenberg, G. N. Wilcox, S. W. Wilcox and

Carl Isenberg.

The coming of the new century saw a diversification of the

ethnic makeup of workers at Kekaha. The plantation was well known for its

American-German-Norweigan-Hawaiian roots. Later, Japanese, Filipino, Spanish,

Portuguese and other groups filled out the workforce.

To help resolve the

problem of limited water, one of the first successful artesian wells in the

Hawaiian Islands was drilled at Mana by H. P. Fayé to supply more

groundwater to the fields. More ground wells were drilled, but as the

plantation grew, more fresh water was needed. To solve this problem, work began

in 1907 to develop miles of ditches to bring Waimea River water to the uplands

and down and across to sugar fields, from Kekaha to Mana.

The main ditch

for the system, commonly known as the Waimea-Kekaha Ditch, grew to 28 miles in

length. A key section was built in 1911 and engineered by George Ewart, H. P.

Fayé’s brother-in-law. The ditch started 850 feet above Waimea Valley

and extended for three miles, then dropped 300 feet to power a hydro-electric

plant. Water running through the ditch also served as a flume to bring sugar

cane down the mountainside.

Teams of expert Japanese immigrant tunnel

workers dug the irrigation systems under mountain ridges. Flumes, ditches,

drains and pumping stations, located near dunes along the coast and used to

keep the marshy Mana Plain drained, rounded out the systems.

Growing cane

upland called for another unique engineering project. By 1910, Kekaha Sugar had

a plantation railroad system of 15 miles of permanent track, dozens of cars

that measured about four feet across, and two German-built locomotives. Cane

came down flumes from the mountain to loading docks, where it was loaded into

the cane cars.

The railroad was inaugurated in 1898, and dignitaries were

transported to Queen’s Pond near Polihale in train cane cars. The stand of

monkey pod trees still there today marks the turnaround point for the train.

In 1920, the first and only train robbery ever attempted on Kaua’i

occurred at Saki Mana. After watching silent films of cowboy train robberies at

the plantation theater, a cane worker stole a $10,000 payroll mostly, according

to his testimony, for the thrill of it. His trial drew overflow crowds to the

courthouse in Lihu’e.

In 1923-25, the Kokee Ditch was built, engineered by

Ewart. Known as the Puuhinhina ditch, the waterway extended nine miles and

required 48 feeder tunnels, each about 1,000 feet long. The Puulua Reservoir,

located at 3,000 foot elevation and 10 miles from the sugar mill at Kekaha,

provided water for the upper Kekaha fields. Many of the current Koke’e State

Park roadways were built to access the ditch system.

The results were

remarkable, as land once rejected as pasture land became productive sugar

fields. In 1942, a record 17.9 tons of cane were taken from an acre of the

reclaimed land.

In 1922, additional low-lying salt marshland was drained

by H. P. Fayé. He planted salt-resistant Badilla type of cane and used

silt brought down from the mountains to enrich the soil. By 1931, over 3,000

acres were in cane. The reclamation project was the largest ever undertaken

during the territorial era.

The nine-roller mill in use at that time could

produce 80 tons of sugar a day. One-hundred-pound bags of the sugar were sent

by rail to the wharf at Waimea and paddled out aboard “lighters” to waiting

steamships that took the cane to Honolulu, the West Coast and sometimes the

East Coast for refining and marketing.

The plantation hired “gangs” of

laborers assigned to certain fields and paid them according to how much cane

they produced. By the early 1900s, 1,000 workers were employed, with about 300

families living in plantation homes. Today, some of these homes are restored

and in use as visitor accommodations at Waimea Plantation Cottages.

A

hospital at Waimea, several schools, four independent stores and a church

served the community. Mana, a town now all but abandoned near the main gate to

Pacific Missile Range Facility, thrived with a large vegetable garden that

served the entire plantation.

Kekaha Federal Credit Union was started in

1938 to serve workers, who were kept informed of plantation news for decades

through the Kekamana company newsletter.

In 1922, during lease talks with

the territorial government, Kekaha Sugar Co. purchased outright the mill site

and adjoining plantation camp sites, an area of about 40 acres. In 1924, the

mill was upgraded and a new 15-roller Honolulu Iron Works mill was installed,

capable of grinding 40 tons of cane per hour.

In this era, American

Factors became the Honolulu agent for Kekaha Plantation following the breakup

of German-owned Hackfeld & Co. as a result of World War I.

H. P.

Fayé served as plantation manager until his death in 1929. William

Danford succeeded Fayé, to be followed by Lindsay A. Fayé Sr.,

who took over in 1935 and managed until his retirement in 1963. Other managers

included David Silver, W. J. “Bunt” Baldwin, Thomas O’Brien and Lindsay A.

“Tony” Fayé Jr., who was appointed manager in 1973.

During lease

renegotiations just prior to World War II, the territory called the Kekaha

sugar lands its most valuable acreage in all Hawai’i.

By 1935, Kekaha

Plantation employed 1,408 unskilled laborers and 39 skilled workers and

supported 1,428 family members. Plantation camps located along the plantation

train tracks were then well-known villages. Today they are mostly memories. The

camps included Kekaha, Poki’i, Waiawa, Mana, Saki Mana, Kaunalewa and Hukipo.

Remarkably, this great expansion and hope for the future was built upon a

plantation set upon leased lands that could be lost at public auction when

leases came up for renewal about every 20 years.

In 1940, in response to a

workers’ strike, the plantation turned to mechanized harvesting of cane, taking

300 men out of the workforce with trucks that took the place of the traditional

flume system.

One of the first cane cleaning plants installed in Hawai’i

cleaned the cane brought in by the trucks. By 1947, the large trucks had

completely replaced the sugar cane train at Kekaha, which was then shut

down.

During WWII, more than 80 workers left to serve in the armed forces.

Kekaha Plantation continued to help the families of the workers by providing

housing and other support.

Kekaha’s own versions of “Rosie the Riveter”

appeared at gas stations when women took up jobs left behind by the departing

GIs. Waimea and Kekaha schoolchildren were organized into “work for victory”

teams and helped out on the plantation.

Kekaha Sugar provided the

resources for feeding the West Side community operating poultry farms, truck

farms and many of the volunteer efforts required and needed by military forces

brought to Kaua’i.

Some workers joined the Kauai Volunteers, a local

militia group whose officers included Alan Fayé of the mounted division

and men with ties to Kekaha Plantation. The group provided a much-needed home

guard, gave workers deemed essential to the plantation a chance to take part in

the war effort, and introduced BAR rifles to the world of pig hunting in mauka

lands. Volunteer Japanese-American workers joined the Kiawe Corps, clearing the

airfields at Mana for the Army Air Corp.

During the post-war era,

Kekaha’s mill was known as one of the most modern and spacious of the Hawaiian

sugar mills. It was rebuilt in 1954, and Hawaii’s first all-turbine-driven,

17-roller tandem mill was installed.

In 1960, the community, with strong

support from the plantation, succeeded in lobbying for construction of the

Kikiaola Small Boat Harbor. The plantation also supported construction of Kauai

Veteran’s Memorial Hospital, built at Waimea in 1957, replacing the old Waimea

Hospital.

In 1954, a 100-foot series of 17 rollers from Honolulu Iron

Works were installed at the mill, making Kekaha’s factory the heaviest in all

Hawai’i, capable of crushing 125 tons of cane per hour.

Kekaha Sugar Co.

was sold to JMB Realty of Chicago in 1988 and became Amfac Sugar-Kaua’i West.

In the 1990s, lowered federal sugar price ceilings and rising costs eroded

employment at the plantation. Some 850 employees were at work in 1948, while by

1983 only 449 were employed.

In 1987, Kekaha Plantation had export

earnings of $19.5 million and a payroll of $6.8 million, providing 335 jobs

directly and 380 jobs indirectly, according to state counts. By 1997, only 465

were employed by Amfac Sugar Kaua’i to operate both the former Kekaha Sugar and

Lihu’e Plantations.

Looking back, Kekaha Sugar is being remembered as a

good place to work. Some workers laid off with Amfac Sugar Kaua’i’s closing

Nov. 17 were the third and fourth generation of their family to work at Kekaha

Sugar. Over the years, many workers passed up promotions to stay at Kekaha,

where the lifestyle and working conditions on the plantation were considered

better than average.

The future of the mill equipment and its state-owned

lease lands is still uncertain.

Christine Fayé, of Gay &

Robinson’s plantation sugar tour, and Kaua’i Historical Society archives

contributed to this report.

TGI new media manager Chris Cook can be

reached at 245-3681 (ext. 222) and ccook@pulitzer.net