Old Koloa Sugar Mill

The Old Kōloa Sugar Mill

Where Hawaiʻi’s Sugar Era Began

There are places whose ruins tell a much larger story than their weathered walls suggest.

In the heart of Kōloa on the south shore of Kauaʻi, an old stone chimney rises above the surrounding landscape. It is easy to drive past without realizing that this quiet remnant marks a turning point in the history of Hawaiʻi.

The Old Sugar Mill of Kōloa is associated with the first successful large-scale commercial sugar operation in the Hawaiian Islands. What began here in the 1830s would eventually transform Hawaiʻi's economy, landscape, population, and culture.

Before the Plantation

Sugarcane was not introduced to Hawaiʻi by the plantation industry. Polynesian voyagers brought kō, or sugarcane, to the Hawaiian Islands centuries earlier, and it was already being cultivated when Captain James Cook arrived at Kauaʻi in 1778.

The change came when sugar became a commercial enterprise.

In 1835, the American firm Ladd & Company leased approximately 980 acres in Kōloa from Kauaʻi's royal governor, Kaikioʻewa. The location offered fertile land, access to Kōloa Landing and, importantly, flowing water that could be used to power machinery.

The company's first attempts were modest. Wooden rollers used to crush the cane quickly wore out and were replaced by iron ones. By 1837, the operation had produced 4,286 pounds of sugar and 2,700 gallons of molasses commercial production on a scale Hawaiʻi had not seen before.

A new mill was constructed along Waihohonu Stream in 1841. The ruins of that mill are what remain today as the Old Sugar Mill of Kōloa National Historic Landmark.

A Landscape Transformed

What happened in Kōloa didn't stay in Kōloa.

Sugar plantations spread throughout the islands and eventually became one of Hawaiʻi's dominant industries. Plantation agriculture altered land use, water systems and communities, while the industry's demand for labor contributed to waves of immigration from China, Japan, Portugal, Korea, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. The resulting plantation communities became an important part of the multicultural Hawaiʻi that exists today.

But that history is complicated.

The rise of plantation agriculture also concentrated economic power, changed traditional relationships with land and water, and became intertwined with the growing political influence of foreign business interests in the Hawaiian Kingdom. Sugar's history in Hawaiʻi therefore isn't simply a story of agricultural success. It is also part of a much larger story about labor, immigration, land, power and the enormous changes Hawaiʻi experienced during the nineteenth century.

Kōloa was also the site of an important early labor dispute. In 1841, Native Hawaiian plantation workers staged what the National Park Service describes as the first general strike by Native laborers in the Hawaiian Islands. Workers earning 12½ cents per day sought an increase to 25 cents. The strike lasted roughly two weeks before it was broken, but it foreshadowed labor struggles that would continue throughout Hawaiʻi's plantation era.

What Remains

The original company did not last. Financial difficulties forced Ladd & Company to close in 1845, although sugar production at Kōloa continued under subsequent owners. The old Waihohonu mill remained in use until 1912, when it was replaced by a larger facility east of town. Kōloa Plantation ultimately continued operating until 1996, bringing more than 160 years of plantation sugar production in the area to an end.

Today, what remains of the old mill is remarkably quiet.

Stone walls. An old chimney. Grass growing where an industry once operated.

Yet standing there, you're looking at the remains of something that helped reshape an entire archipelago.

Field Note

For me, Kōloa isn't simply somewhere I've traveled to photograph.

It's home.

I grew up here.

As a kid, places like the old mill were simply part of the landscape. You passed them without necessarily understanding the weight of the history around you. Only later do you begin to recognize that the familiar places of childhood can also be chapters in much larger stories.

That's one of the reasons I photograph places like this now.

A landscape isn't only what appears in the frame. There are layers beneath it—geology, ecology, people, work, culture and memory. Sometimes a photograph becomes a reason to stop and learn what happened in a place before we arrived.

The old Kōloa mill isn't necessarily beautiful in the conventional sense.

But it is a reminder that landscapes remember.

And sometimes all that's left is a stone wall, an old chimney, and the stories we choose to keep telling.

— Josh King Field Notes | Kōloa, Kauaʻi