H. P. Faye

[1] Hans Peter Faye was born in 1859 in Drammen in Buskerud, Norway, when the country was in a personal union with Sweden.

[4] In addition to operating his own businesses, in 1898 he helped merge three existing plantations into the Kekaha Sugar Company, and he became its first manager and Vice president, a position he held for thirty years, until his death in 1928.

[6] As part of Kekaha Sugar's expansion program, three surface water diversions were constructed to address the failure of the well supply.

[4] In 1926, the Kokee Ditch was completed diverting water from Mohihi Stream and the headwater of the Waimea River in the Alaka'i Swamp at an altitude of about 3400 feet.

About one-fourth of the Kokee Ditch supply has irrigated the highland cane fields below Pu'u Opae reservoir on Niu Ridge.

With the draining of the Nohili and Kawaiele Marshes in 1922 and the continued expansion of sugarcane area, another period of well development took place in the 1920s and 1930s.

Initially, this consisted of batteries of closely spaced drilled wells, but Maui-type shafts (tunnels that skim fresh water off the top of the basal aquifer) located along the foot of the bluffs subsequently replaced these.

The single-room museum contains exhibits and photographs tracking the journey of Faye and the sugar industry in West Kauai.