Kekaha, Hawaii

History

By 1884 a sugar mill (later the Kekaha Sugar Mill) was operating within Kekaha. The mill was jointly owned by Otto Isenberg, Carl Isenberg, Paul Isenberg, Albert Wilcox, G. N. Wilcox, and S. M. Wilcox. By 1898, the Kekaha Sugar Mill Company was merged with other local interests to form the Kekaha Sugar Company.

The sugar mill had a major influence in Kekaha's development, including banking, employment, transportation, housing and utilities such as water and electricity. The mill employed several generations of local families. It closed in 2000 when the entire sugar industry in Hawaiʻi collapsed. The mill was purchased in 2005 by mainland investors who sold off its heavy machinery to other mills as far away as Africa.

Hawaiʻi's first (and only) train robbery occurred here in February 1920, when a masked gunman stopped a slow-moving sugar train and escaped with the locomotive and $11,000 (~$176,786 in 2025) taken from the labor paymaster on board. Police recovered the money in a swamp near the home of a local fisherman, whose suspicious behavior soon resulted in his arrest and conviction. The fisherman was a big fan of Western movies, and was thought to have been inspired by some of the films he had seen.

From the History section of Kekaha, Hawaii on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.