Lucius E. Pinkham's road to the Hawai'i governor's office was circuitous, to say the least.
Born in Chicopee Falls, Mass., and educated in Boston public schools, Pinkham arrived in Hawai'i in 1892 to build a coal-handling plant for Oahu Railway & Land Co. He later worked as a cashier for Pacific Hardware Co., and oversaw well projects for sugar plantations.
In 1904, at 53, Pinkham was named president of the Board of Health. He introduced a plan to drain "unsanitary" Waikiki marshes via a 2-mile canal. The Board of Health approved the measure, but nothing happened until Pinkham was appointed the fourth governor of the territory — a breakthrough for the local Democratic Party — by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913.
While the creation of the Ala Wai Canal and the development of Waikiki as a tourist center stand as the most enduring legacies of his five-year term, Pinkham was also responsible for progressive legislation like the Workmen's Compensation Act and the Teachers Pension Bill.
In 1917, Pinkham, who expanded the Hawai'i National Guard to an unprecedented 6,000 men, established a Guard company comprised entirely of Americans of Japanese ancestry. That same year, Pinkham also signed a law financing a 15,000-word Hawaiian dictionary.
Pinkham died in San Francisco in 1922, a year after work finally began on the Ala Wai dredging project. In 1924, approval was granted for a territorial mental hospital on land in Kane'ohe donated by Pinkham.
