Hawaii Consolidated Railway - Origin

Origin

Like the Oahu Railway and Land Company (OR&L), the HCR grew out of a necessity for good transportation (mainly for sugar plantations) at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. Though not the first railroad on the Big Island, it was certainly the most ambitious. Its principal backer was Benjamin Dillingham, the businessman who also started the OR&L, among numerous other Hawaiian companies. In the late 1890s Dillingham purchased land near the growing city of Hilo, and it was this land that would become his Olaʻa Sugar Company plantation. On March 28, 1899, Dillingham received a charter to build the original eight miles of the Hilo Railroad that connected the Olaʻa sugar mill to Waiākea, soon to become the location of Hilo's deepwater port.

Line extensions continued apace. The Olaʻa line was completed in 1900, immediately followed by a seventeen mile extension to Kapoho, home of the Puna Sugar Company plantation. Immediately after that two branch lines were constructed, also to sugar plantations, and then the railroad was extended north into Hilo itself. A chiefly tourist line, branching from Olaʻa, was built inland 12.5 miles up the mountain to Glenwood where visitors to the Volcano House near Kilauea Volcano would then transfer to buses. Due to stiff competition from motor vehicles, the Glenwood extension was scaled back to Mountain View in 1932.