Was it really the mosquitoes or was it the promise of tourist dollars?
When then-president of the Board of Health L.E. Pinkham first proposed the draining of marshlands in Waikiki in 1906, it was with the presumption that the still waters, and the mosquitoes they supposedly bred, posed a significant public health risk.
By the time the project got under way in 1921, as part of what was called the Waikiki Reclamation Project, city planners were committed to an even more ambitious goal of transforming the area into a residential subdivision and tourist center.
The creation of the 2-mile Ala Wai Canal, administered by Walter Dillingham's Hawaiian Dredging Co., took eight years to complete. Hawaiian Dredging then sold the coral-rich dredging spoils to fill the now-emptied springs, ponds and marshes in the area, which in turn provided the literal foundation for the homes, hotels and businesses that sprang up in Waikiki over the ensuing decades.
Historians like Barry Nakamura have noted that the reclamation project marked a radical shift in land and water use in the area.
For centuries leading up to the dredging, the wetlands — which included springs, taro lo'i, rice paddies, fruit and vegetable patches, duck ponds and fishing areas — were a valuable means of subsistence for Native Hawaiians and other locals.
With the commercial development of Waikiki, once a playground for Hawaiian monarchs, grew the infrastructure for a tourist economy still a half-century from being realized.
