Koamalu : a story of pioneers on Kauai, and of what they built in that island garden / by Ethel M. Damon. [Vol. 1, no. 2]

774

K A M A L U

employed George Charman to haul the cane to be ground
at Koloa mill. But there was no profit in it and his own ill
health retarded operations. Judge McBryde died in
1878, and his wife, left with a family of six young children, turned for help to an old friend, Judge Widemann.
He interested August Dreier in the proposition, the agriculturist who had come out for Hoffschlaeger and Company in earlier days to plant cotton on east Kauai, and
had finally bought out Captain Charman at Koloa. Mr.
Dreier put $20,000 into the Eleele venture, forming a
partnership with Mrs. McBryde, who owned the land.
Twenty years afterward, when it was reorganized by
B. F. Dillingham as McBryde Plantation, Mr. Dreier
sold out for half a million dollars. Today the landing at
Eleele, not far from the mouth of the Hanapepe River, is
called Port Allen. Although still an open roadstead, it is
protected in part by a breakwater and forms the most
important shipping point on west Kauai.
Other Kauai neighbors, too, became interested in sugar
during the years immediately following the achievement

BRYDESWOOD TODAY
The old McBryde home. to the left among the hills, is now the home for the
manager of McBryde Plantation. Reservoirs fill pockets in this lovely hill
country, but most of this mauka land is given over to pineapples
grown by homesteaders.