James Drummond Dole arrived in Hawaii in 1899. The following year he bought a 61-acre tract of land right here in Wahiawa where he established his first pineapple plantation. James Dole wasn't the first person to grow pineapple in Hawaii, but he was certainly the most influential.

Early on, James Dole knew that there would be a huge market for pineapple outside of Hawaii. However, the only logical way to reach this market was to pack and seal the pineapple in cans. As a result, in 1901, James Dole built a pineapple cannery here in Wahiawa, which marked the start of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. Several years later, in 1907, the cannery was relocated to Honolulu harbor, which is closer to the labor pool, shipping ports and supplies. The Honolulu cannery, at one time the world's largest cannery, remained in operation until 1991.

As the demand for pineapple grew, so did the need for more land. So, in 1922, James Dole bought the island of Lanai and converted it from a cactus-covered island with 150 people into the largest pineapple plantation in the world with 20,000 pineapple-producing acres and over a thousand pineapple workers and their families. For nearly 70 years, Lanai was operated as a pineapple plantation and became widely known as the "Pineapple Island" as the supplier of nearly 75 percent of the world's pineapple!

By the 1930's, Hawaii was known as the pineapple capital of the world. The Hawaiian Pineapple Company he founded was now processing over 200,000 tons of pineapple a year, helping to make pineapple Hawaii's second largest industry, responsible for 90 percent of all the canned pineapple produced in the world!

By the 1940's, there were eight pineapple companies operating in Hawaii. By far the largest was James Dole's Hawaiian Pineapple Company, with plantations on Oahu and Lanai and the cannery in Honolulu. At the time, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company controlled over half of all the pineapple land in Hawaii and employed nearly 3,000 permanent employees and over 4,000 seasonal employees.

James Drummond Dole passed away in 1958 at the age of 80. The Hawaiian Pineapple Company he founded is now known the world over as Dole Foods Company, and the "Dole" brand is one of the most recognized brands in the world.