Old Onomea Hānai Farm

In the oldest times Onomea Bay was a fishing village called Kahali‘i. Read more about the Legend of Twin Rocks. Settlers cleared much of the vegetation to plant food producing crops such as taro, coconuts, breadfruit and mangos.

In the early 1800’s the fishing village known as Kahali’i, became a shipping port. Onomea Bay served as one of the Big Island Hawai’i’s first natural landing areas for sailing ships. First importing materials to construct the Onomea Sugar Mill and then exporting raw sugar. 

In 1863 Onomea Plantation was started. When the sugar industry sprung up, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino workers lived there and worked in the cane fields and helped build the Onomea Sugar Mill. In 1938, Hilo Sugar Company owned 4,051 acres of land on Hawai‘i Island and leased an additional 3,720 acres. December 1976 when mill shut down due to competition from foreign markets.

by the early 1900s Onomea Valley was deserted and the vegetation so dense that few signs of the former habitation could be seen. By the 1960s and 70s, Onomea Valley was an overgrown and virtually impenetrable jungle, choked with wild invasive trees, weed and thorn thickets, and strangling vines.