Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum

In Puʻunene on Maui, the Alexander and Baldwin sugar enterprise grew from nineteenth-century plantation beginnings into one of Hawaii’s major corporations. Samuel Thomas Alexander managed the Waiheʻe plantation from 1863, and with Henry Perrine Baldwin formed the Pāʻia plantation in 1870. After the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 opened the United States market to Hawaiian sugar, Alexander developed a seventeen-mile irrigation aqueduct from Haleakalā’s wet slopes to dry cane lands, completed in 1878 despite great cost. The water system fueled expansion into milling, transport, refining, and neighboring plantations, helping make Puʻunene a key milling center and sugar a powerful force in Maui’s economy and communities.

Kahului, Hawaii · United States