Managing Environmental Diversity for Sustainable Human Communities: Lessons from East Maui, Hawai‘i, USA - Island Futures: Conservation and Development Across the Asia-Pacific Region - page 93

make space for growing communities in Hana, Kipahulu, and Kaupo. At the end
of the nineteenth century, the building of a sugar mill in the coastal community of
Kipahulu increased employment opportunities and diversified the socioeconomic
situation somewhat by supporting stores and churches. Nevertheless, sugar cane
plantations on the fertile isthmus between Haleakala and the West Maui mountains
had far more arable land and greater access to port facilities in Kahului and Lahaina,
and these plantations eventually came to dominate the industry on Maui.
The Kipahulu sugar mill closed in 1922 because of its geographic isolation and
unreliable transportation networks by land and sea. The Haiku Fruit and Packing
Company attempted a conversion from sugar cane to pineapples in an operation that
lasted only 3 years. Most of the wage jobs that supported rural communities
between Hana and Kaupo were lost with the end of commercial agriculture. The
population in the East Maui communities fell from a high of several thousand resi-
dents during the period of growth in the sugar industry to fewer than 500 as the
economy declined and urban centers on Maui and Oahu absorbed immigrant labor
from rural areas.
Large tracts of land in East Maui were put up for sale after the decline of com-
mercial agriculture, and the first to take advantage of the opportunity was Paul
Fagan. His purchase of 5,700 ha in the early 1940s was the start of Hana Ranch,
which is still operational today after having had a series of owners. Fagan, consid-
ered somewhat of a local hero today by some residents for providing economic
development, had much of the land cleared of sugar cane and planted with alien
rattail grass and Kikuyu grass before importing Hereford cattle. In 1946 he built the
Hotel Hana Maui and put Hana on the route of adventurous and privacy-seeking
travelers at the start of the post-war tourism boom in Hawai'i.
Fagan's ambition was to provide luxury accommodations in a remote and iso-
lated setting far from Waikiki where wealthy travelers could relax in a tropical rural
environment. His success in attracting guests to the hotel led some of them to buy
land and build vacation homes along the Hana coast, including at Kipahulu.
Spectacular landscapes and seascapes were the primary driving forces behind the
growth of tourism in East Maui, and beginning in the 1960s Kipahulu was to
become mythologized in travel literature as representative of the “old Hawai'i” that
was quickly being lost on O'ahu.
The Cultural Kipuka : An Emergent Stakeholder
Dozens of generations of residents cared for, and fought for, East Maui. Although
their struggles continue, the adversary is no longer a powerful chief from the island
of Hawai'i or the other side of Maui, but the onslaught of post-statehood economic
development. The island of Maui has now become a major tourist destination, with
nearly 2.5 million visitors and more than $3 billion in expenditures annually
(Blackford 2001 ; DBEDT 2006 ). Tourism development in East Maui in the post-
statehood period did not have the visible impact that it did in Central and West Maui.