The Wahiawa Community and Business Association adopted an eleven-part mission statement for our town in 1998, our one-hundredth anniversary. I have previously discussed the first element of our mission. This item covers the second element of our mission: “Wahiawa is a community whose people take pride in our agricultural heritage and rural lifestyle.”

Wahiawa can be proud of its agricultural heritage because it grew into an important agricultural center despite being considered inaccessible and nothing but poor grassland, suitable only for a few cows. As a result, the Wahiawa tract was the last piece of land available for settlement on Oahu when Byron Clark purchased it in 1898. The prevailing view when the town was established was that Wahiawa “would not support a respectable family of pigs.”

A group of homesteaders led by Clark had the vision and confidence to see the potential that existed here. These early settlers included Leonard G. Kellogg, Thomas L. Holloway, William P. Thomas, Alfred W. Eames, Carl Pullman, Harry R. Hanna, Thomas H. Gibson, John W. Welte, Emmit C. Rhodes, W. B. McCormick, and Edgar Wood. Others, including James D. Dole, who in 1900 bought 61 acres of Wahiawa land, soon followed them. Dole had originally wanted to grow coffee, but settled on pineapple, even though previous ventures to make pineapple an economically sound crop had failed.

The key breakthrough for agriculture came with the establishment of the Wahiawa Water Company through an agreement between the government, the Waialua Agricultural Company and the Wahiawa homesteaders. Over the years the water company built a dam, reservoir, flumes, ditches and tunnels to carry water from the north branch of Kaukonahua Stream to the homestead land and beyond. When the first phase of construction was completed in 1902, the land began to thrive. Pineapple soon became Wahiawa’s most important crop. By 1906, Wahiawa became know as the ‘Land of a Million Pines” [Pineapples].

With increased acreage under cultivation, more people came to live in Wahiawa, primarily in camps. Many Japanese, Chinese, and Korean immigrant workers relocated from the sugar plantations. The camps became the center of life for their residents. As Lani Nedbalek relates in her book, Wahiawa; From Dream to Reality, “United by hard work and isolation, strong friendships formed in the camps. Residents became confidants, helping one another, sharing food, teaching skills, and developing bonds akin to the closeness of family.”

The tenacious spirit that drove Wahiawa’s founders, the pride they experienced in nurturing the land and seeing it flourish, and the kinship they derived from shared hardships are models for current residents of Wahiawa and illustrate why we cherish our agricultural and rural heritage.

W.C.B.A. President Jack Kampfer