[4] In December 1858 he sailed to Honolulu, Hawaii, on a long ocean voyage via Cape Horn on the clipper ship Syren,[5] seeking to improve his health.

During his lifetime Atherton became one of the most wealthiest and influential businessmen on the Hawaiian Islands, primarily interested in sugar cane, he later became active in a number of corporations and enterprises.

[6] Castle & Cooke during his tenure, was one of the Big Five (Hawaii), known in Hawaiian as Nā Hui Nui ʻElima.

Civic duties included being appointed as a member of the privy council under King Kalakaua in 1887,[8] and again in 1891 by his successor, Queen Liliuokalani.

[9] In 1901 he traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet President Theodore Roosevelt, as part of a committee including Francis Mills Swanzy (managing director of Theo H. Davies & Co.), and William Owen Smith to discuss the needs of Hawaii; specifically use of Chinese labor and the arrival of automobiles.

[10] In 1897 Atherton, along with Peter Cushman Jones (Minister of Finance under Liliuokalani) and his son Edwin A. Jones, Clarence Hyde Cooke, Fred W. MacFarlane, Edward Davies Tinney, H. Waterhouse, T. May and C. Bosse founded the Bank of Hawaii,[11] the second bank to be established in the Hawaiian Islands.

[13] A supporter of the annexation of Hawaii by the United States, he founded the newspaper Hawaiian Star of Honolulu in 1893, as, "the official voice of the Provisional Government by American businessman.

[27] Atherton helped establish the Young Men’s Christian Association in Honolulu, HI and for many years served as one of its directors, and then as its president.