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Interesting early map of Pearl Harbor, showing the Oahu Railway to the Ewa Sugar Plantation, Pearl City and Ford's Island.

Includes soundings within the harbor in fathoms. Locates Pearl City in a street grid pattern. Locates the Oahu Railway, the Ewa Sugar Plantation with a mill, Ford's Island, Puuloa and the road to Honolulu.

Oahu Railway

The Oahu Railway & Land Company (OR&L) was founded by Benjamin Dillingham. Dillingham conceived in the 1870s of the arid 'Ewa Plain to the southeast of Pearl Habor as an excellent location for human settlement. However, there were two problems: a lack of water and, more significantly, a lack of transportation. A trip from Honolulu to the ʻEwa by horse-drawn wagon was an all-day affair.

In 1879, James Campbell successfully dug ʻEwa's first artesian well in 1879. Campbell had purchased 40,000 acres of ʻEwa land to start a cattle ranch, but quickly realized that ʻEwa's rich volcanic soil and year-round sunshine and a supply of water was ideal for growing sugar cane. Within a couple of years sugar plantations were sprouting up in this southwestern part of Oahu. The need for transportation between the harbor and ʻEwa was becoming essential.

Dillingha leased a portion of Campbell's ʻEwa and Kahuku land to start two sugar plantations and obtained a government railroad charter from King David Kalākaua on September 11, 1888. After securing the capital, Dillingham broke ground in March 1889, with a goal of connecting the 12 miles between Honolulu and ʻAiea by fall 1889.

By 1892 the line was 18.5 miles long, reaching ʻEwa sugar mill, home of Dillingham's ʻEwa Plantation Company property. Although progress stalled during the chaos of the late Kingdom and early Republican periods, by 1895 the railroad had passed through what would become the junction of Waipahu, traversed the ʻEwa plain, and was skirting the Waiʻanae coast to a sugar mill there. After issuing gold bonds in January 1897, the company extended the railroad around Oahu's rugged Kaʻena Point to Haleiwa, on the north shore, by June, 1897, where Dillingham built a hotel.

By December 1898 the main line was complete, stretching past Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach all the way to Kahuku and the Kahuku sugar mill, past the island's northernmost tip. Although a circle-island line was proposed, it was never seriously considered.