Relics of Plantation Engineering Old Plantation Days, February 2012

 Now-a-days there is not much to show for the over 170 year span of sugarcane farming and milling.  Legacy structures like mills have all been torn down and shipped off to foreign lands.  Equipment and machinery was auctioned off and cut up for scrap or salvaged for parts.  There are a few relics of plantation engineering and structures that have withstood the ravages of time and the elements.  These are structures made of stone and concrete.  I still marvel at the strength and tenacity these structures have.

I have often talked about the flumes that transported cane from the fields over miles and miles of flumes down to the mill at the ocean’s edge.  These flumes are completely gone now but the INTAKE structures within the many rivers of the Hamakua coast still exist to this day.  Almost every stream had an intake and a few rivers had several intakes at different elevations.  The intakes were constructed within the channel of the steam or river and diverted water from the main river into the flume line.  Being that the flume was open and controlled by gravity the flume was cut into the side of the valley wall on a grade rarely exceeding 1%.  The flume would meander along the wall of the valley until it finally crested the rim and could traverse the fields on the cultivated “flat” lands.  The flume from the intake to the crest was called a ‘Source’ or ‘Supply’ flume and once it got to the fields it became known as a ‘Transportation’ flume.

Fluming cane was the primary method of getting cane to the mills prior to trucks and machines.  Back in the late 1800’s and through the turn of the century the intake structures were built in the river channels.  To this day you can see these structures and many are virtually undamaged and essentially operational!!  The plantation engineers of that era used native rock and concrete to build these monuments in time.  Sometimes the native rock was CUT into angular blocks to make the dam structures easier to set.  The laborers who cut these rocks were paid 5 cents per stone.  Again I look at the engineering and marvel at how they managed to divert water from the middle of what are very large flows in streams like the Wailuku, Honolii, Kawainui, Akaka, and Umauma rivers.

For the color photo page of Old Plantation Days I have a January 2012 picture one of the intakes at Umauma River.  What looks like a miniature version of Niagara Falls is actually a native stone intake structure that completely crosses the entire river floor of the Umauma River.  You will note that huge boulders that existed in the river were used as part of the structure.   This structure appears to have been built around the turn of the century as it is depicted on 1902 maps for Hakalau Plantation.  Massive floods over the course of the past 110 years have failed to put a dent in this piece of plantation legacy.   Farther upstream on the Umauma is a place called “Swinging Bridge” ford.  You can drive right to this crossing and see the stone intakes just makai of the concrete ford.  

The other legacy structures I want to feature are the seawalls built at the ocean’s edge at the mills.  Again, native Hawaiian rock was cut into square and rectangular pieces and cemented right at the edge of the pounding surf.  The seawall at the C. Brewer building just north of the Wailuku River has a beautiful example of cut stone.  The wall has a small waterfall coming out of it as well.  This waterfall is actually the portal of a stream that comes from Wainaku Camp above.  When the mill was built the engineers encased the stream in a rock lined and cement grouted tunnel from the belt highway under the mill buildings and then out to the ocean.

When C. Brewer was renovating the old sugar warehouse for its corporate headquarters in 1998, someone visited the site and remarked at the cut stone seawall.  He said “My great-grandfather emigrated from Russia to Hawaii as a Stone mason.  He and many of his country men were renowned for their skills at building large stone structures and were asked to come to Hawaii to build structures like these at the sugar plantations”.

Hawaii has been called the melting pot of races and societies all from our Plantation Heritage past.  Some cultures made Hawaii their home because of famine or strife back in their homeland and now we see that some cultures made Hawaii their home because they were imported for their skills at building structures that would outlive them and the plantation that employed them.