A mural of Manele Bay in downtown Lana'i City
When you think of taking a trip to Hawai’i, you’re probably picturing beach, palm trees and pineapples. And in the case of the small island of Lānaʻi, you’d be spot on.
Sort of, anyway.
At only 20-odd miles across and home to only 3,000 people, this unique slice of the world has a pretty darn complicated, fascinating history — especially when you consider that it’s part of the United States.
Ancient residents of Māui thought Lānaʻi was a terrifying land of man-eating ghosts, and at one time you’d have only been sent here to be punished or prove your (quavering) manhood. Then in the 1500s, Māui’s Prince Kaululaau managed to convince his people that he’d rid Lānaʻi of its evil spirits, prompting his dad to bequeath the island to him and some loyal subjects. Life on Lānaʻi continued pretty peacefully until the late 1770s…when King Kamehameha slaughtered its residents almost en masse in a violently successful effort to unite Hawai’i.
Shortly thereafter, following British explorer Captain James Cook‘s discovery of the islands, Western missionaries began sailing their epic way to Hawai’i, intent on new souls. In the 1860s, Mormons came to isolated Lānaʻi seeking a colony of religious freedom and native converts, but left after just a few years, disappointed by failed crops and church leader Walter Murray Gibson‘s scandalous creation of his own island fiefdom.
Though his brethren departed for Oah’u, Gibson remained on Lānaʻi in the naïve good graces of then-king Kalakaua. Eventually, power-hungry Gibson was made Hawai’i's de facto prime minister, and at what is now the Four Seasons Lodge at Koele, he set up the island’s then-biggest business, the Lanai Company Cattle Ranch. After his death in 1888, his daughter took over; while she and her husband were ultimately unable to make the ranch a financial success, they did hire foreman George Munro, a conservationist-minded New Zealander who, to counteract the overgrazing of the land by thousands of sheep and cows, brought humidifying and iconic Cook Island pines to Lānaʻi.
Cook Island pines surround the stables at Koele, former site of the Lanai Company Cattle Ranch
In 1922, cash-poor Lānaʻi was sold to James Dole of pineapple fame. Needing more labor, he encouraged Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, and Puerto Rican immigrants to come for steady work and proceeded to turn the island into the world’s largest plantation. (Many of the original plantation workers’ homes still stand in a ramshackle fashion in town, and a fair number of Filipino families, in particular, remain here. Their strongest influence can be seen in colorful house paint, vibrant front yard gardens, different types of lumpia on area menus and adobo ingredients in local markets.)
Lana'i's immigrant legacy includes banana lumpia at the Lana'i City Grille, historic plantation workers' homes and adobo pig roasts
But when the Great Depression decreased demand for fancy fruit, in came Castle & Cooke. By the 1910s, this Los Angeles-based company already held a one-third stake in the powerful Matson shipping empire; in 1931, they swooped in on the financially weakened Hawaiian Pineapple Company, gradually pushing out Dole while taking his name. By 1961, the pineapple kingdom would be entirely theirs, and Lānaʻi ran not unlike a feudal dream.
At age 15, all Lānaʻi residents were required to go work for Dole. Almost the entire island was dedicated to growing, processing and transporting the fruit, and operations ran on two shifts, starting each day at 4:30am. Up-and-comers would be assigned to a variety of departments, from picking to trucking to experimental; the latter successfully hybridized the low-acid Maui Gold. Work was plentiful, but opportunities for advancement were not; to avoid a future of sunstroke and backbreaking work, many young people fled, staying away from their otherwise beloved home for years.
Thousands of Lana'i's 89,000 acres used to be pineapple fields
By the mid-1980s, though, the dollar-green pastures of the agriculture industry were being replanted among the cheaper labor markets of Asia. Castle & Cooke closed up Lānaʻi’s fields and began focusing its efforts on tourism. In 1990, they developed the island’s former cattle ranch into the Four Seasons Lodge at Koele, and soon, many locals who’d left long before began to trickle back. Two hotels would soon follow, the Four Seasons Resort at Manele Bay and central, less expensive Hotel Lānaʻi, as well as a handful of excursion providers.
From left: Four Seasons Lodge at Koele, Hotel Lana'i, and Four Seasons Resort at Manele Bay
All that’s now left behind of the pineapple trade is Dole Park in downtown Lānaʻi City, a fruit-lined walkway to the Cultural & Heritage Center, and on much of the island, a tragically short-sighted environmental legacy. For many decades, pineapple corms were planted in holes poked through layers of plastic sheeting laid atop the soil to hold in moisture and keep out invading weeds; occasionally, (almost) the whole works would be burned off to regenerate the soil for new pineapple, but this rarely eliminated all the plastic sheeting. Then in 1992, when the fields were abandoned for good, the last layer wasn’t burned off at all. The result? Remnants of black plastic that lie as deep as six feet under but also poke through the soil, rendering fallow whole swaths of the island.
The sign at Lana'i City's Dole Park and bits of black plastic poking through the soil are part of the island's pineapple legacy
But happily, efforts are now being made in earnest to replant Lānaʻi with endangered natives and bring back local food production. On the island’s northwest, the Nature Conservancy runs the 590-acre Kanepu’u Preserve, where 48 native, dry-lowland species — like spindly-strong ironwood and ebony lama trees — are being nurtured. You can rent a 4-wheel drive in town, take a 20-minute drive out here to this quiet, windswept area and either take a self-guided tour using the preserve’s explanatory signs or see about arranging a guided tour through the Nature Conservancy’s Mau’i office.
Ironwood trees leading into the Kanepu'u Preserve
Back on the eastern side of the island, venerable Alberta De Jetley and gruff local character Bennie Richardson labor to make Lānaʻi more sustainable, as well as more profitable. Since 2003, they’ve run Bennie’s Farm, the only commercial farm on Lānaʻi, where they’ve organically revived the soil, keep it planted as cheaply as possible, and, among several other crops, fine-tune the complex art of (gorgeously sweet) banana growing. In addition to selling their produce to the local resorts and markets, Alberta can be found at a farmers’ market stall every Saturday in Dole Park from 8am to noon; come early, though, as she tends to sell out fast. The farm can’t presently keep up with local demand, but someday…just maybe.
At Bennie's Farm, the only commercial farm on Lana'i, Alberta and Bennie nurture bananas and much more
Modern-day Lānaʻi is almost entirely privately-owned by Castle & Cooke, which itself is owned by American real estate mogul David Murdock. Murdock does his best to keep the island well-maintained and attractive to potential investors, but his efforts aren’t without controversy. These days, the hot-button issue on Lānaʻi is a plan to build a fenced-in phalanx of windmills on land that’s both barren and sacred, encompassing the moonscape-y Garden of the Gods and ancient ceremonial hunting grounds. (If you doubt hunting is a big deal here, take a stroll through the backstreets of Lānaʻi City and check out the deer antlers displayed in almost every garage.)
Some anti-windmill arguments focus on size, others on questions of benefits
The windmills were initially intended to provide power via an ocean-submerged cable to neighboring Mau’i, and (some) Lānaʻi locals were surprised to discover that their own power needs (which are enormously expensive) hadn’t even been considered. A revised plan now includes 100% power provision for the windmills’ hosts, but mistrust and hope divides the island’s residents; you’ll see just as many pro- as anti-windmill posters in Lānaʻi City. Some folks feel that the windmills will bring a steady windfall, while others feel they could disrupt traditional hunting, provide only a small handful of jobs, and further marginalize the governmental status of what amounts to a vulnerable refuge within a remote American state.
Lānaʻi is a case study for what happens when a small and lovely place becomes a religious, governmental and corporate pawn over a long period of time, and still manages to preserve what makes it special.
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See also
Aloha There, Lana’i
Visit Lana’i: New Media Artist-in-Residence Program
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