The sugar mill was built in 1863.
Photo by Terry Luke, Star-Bulletin

At one time, it bore a Hawaii Visitors Bureau marker that read "Old Sugar Mill." Now it's unmarked. Even the State Historic Preservation Department has absolutely nothing in its files on the structure. The building is lumped in with the Kualoa Ahupua'a just down the highway as a national historic site.

It stands as a monument to capitalism during the Civil War years, when the North's access to sugar was cut off and entrepreneurs rushed to fill the Union's empty sugar bowl.

Constructed in 1863 by gentlemen ranchers with familiar names like Charles H. Judd and Samuel G. Wilder, it operated for only eight years before they realized that sugar cane grew better elsewhere. Hawaiian workers - who insisted that Wilder himself mortar the top level of imported bricks - called the mill "Wili-ka-a-i," which, translated loosely, means "a regular pain in the neck." Apparently, a one-eyed Hawaiian worker who helped dig the foundation got tired of twisting his head to peer at his spade.

In the late 1860s, a boy fell into a sugar rendering vat and was boiled alive.

The site is today owned by Kualoa Ranch and run by Judd's descendants. According to Jared Raphael of the ranch, at one time there were plans to restore or stabilize the smokestack - a wood-and-wire harness was added in 1976 - but these plans are currently tabled.

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