A Look Back at 1959, the Year Hawai‘i Became a State

The Admission Act – signed into law on March 18, 1959, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower – dissolved the Territory of Hawai‘i and established America’s 50th state. Statehood took effect on Aug. 21, 1959.

So it is not surprising that 1959 was not only a year of immense change in Hawai‘i but a time of grand visions for the future. Some came to pass and others remained just dreams.

Many of those changes and visions were covered in the pages of Hawaii Business Magazine (then called Hawaii Industry). Here are some headlines and highlights from the archives of 1959.

FEBRUARY | “Navy repairs Russian ships (at Midway)”

Two storm-battered Russian ships limped into Midway Island lagoon on Jan. 22, 1958, after surviving 20 days of one of the worst storms ever recorded in the North Pacific. The story said it was a “miracle” that one of the ships, the freighter General Panfilov, came back to any port.

“Stove-in plating to the very top of the pilot house told of the height of the waves which broke over her. All the lifeboats had been smashed to kindling wood and their heavy steel launching gear twisted like thin wire,” the magazine reported. The ship also had a “nasty crack, extending across more than a third of the main deck in the location where so many Liberty ships had split open before structural alterations were made.”

Technical assistance was requested from Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, and designers and welders arrived to help repair three vessels – the two Russian ships and a Greek-flagged vessel. On Feb. 5, 1959, the last of the three ships cleared the harbor.

MARCH | “Hawaii Sugar: Cautious optimism felt after a bad year in 1958”

A February-June strike in 1958 was the largest industrywide work stoppage in the history of Hawai‘i sugar. Normal annual production of a million tons dropped to 764,953 tons. Officials estimated the overall Island economy lost $36 million as a direct result of the strike but felt things would turn around in 1959.

JUNE | “Walter F. Dillingham – Foremost Man of Industry”

In 1902, Walter F. Dillingham founded Hawaiian Dredging Co., a general contracting firm that eventually did work in Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Borneo, Texas and California.

But its greatest impact was in Hawai‘i. The company developed much of Honolulu’s waterfront – from Waikīkī to Honolulu Harbor – plus the Ala Wai Canal. It helped build Pearl Harbor, the military air bases at Kāne‘ohe and Ford Island, and bases on Palmyra, Johnston and Midway islands.

The company also built hotels, homes, schools and office buildings. Some of its buildings are architectural landmarks, including the Honolulu Museum of Art (opened in 1927) and downtown’s Dillingham Transportation Building (1930).

In 1959, Hawaii Business lauded Dillingham’s many achievements and then focused on one aspect. “While his contributions to the growth and development of the economy of the Territory of Hawaii have been numerous and significant, he is most widely known as a creator of land where no land existed before,” the magazine said. “Over the 57-year span of his company’s dredging and building operations, almost 5,000 acres of now extremely valuable land have been added to the coastline of the Island of Oahu alone.”

Dillingham died in 1963 at the age of 88, but the company he founded lives on. Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co. ranked 15th on Hawaii Business Magazine’s 2024 Top 250, the annual ranking of the biggest companies in the Islands. It is the largest construction company on the list.

“Airlines Add New Planes”

Aloha Airlines placed its new Rolls-Royce-powered Fairchild propjet F-27s in scheduled service during the summer of 1959. “The sleek, 44-passenger aircraft are not only pressurized but air conditioned both on the ground and in flight,” the magazine reported.

Meanwhile, United Airlines started using Douglas DC-8 aircraft between Hawai‘i and the West Coast later that year.

JULY | “Over 700 Miles of wire used for Ala Moana Center telephones”

Sears, Roebuck & Co. was slated to open Aug. 13, 1959, at the center, with the official grand opening scheduled for October. Hawaiian Telephone was installing 526 telephones at the center; in comparison, the entire Kona district had only 541 phones.

Additionally, the telephone company estimated it would install more than 10,000 telephones in 1959 throughout the Islands.

“James Campbell Industrial Park”

The trustees of the Estate of James Campbell initiated development studies for O‘ahu’s Honouliuli district in 1954, and planning and work were well advanced by 1959.

These lands west of the Barbers Point Naval Station were considered well suited for industrial development: a dry climate, winds that would blow smoke out to sea and an excellent foundation on flat land that could support heavy buildings. One disadvantage, inadequate utilities, was gradually being overcome.

Two nearby residential areas were to be built – one on One‘ula beach (the community now called ‘Ewa Beach) and the other mauka (Makakilo).

AUGUST | “Hawaii State Ferry System”

John Hulten, who went on to be president of the state Senate, was the foremost proponent of a state-owned interisland ferry system. He called it a practical, not-too-costly system of surface transportation that would spur the local economy and help integrate the state.

He died in 2002, five years before the privately owned Hawaii Superferry first launched service between Honolulu Harbor and Kahului and Nāwiliwili harbors. But that’s the closest Hawai‘i came to Hulten’s vision. Superferry operations were suspended in March 2009 after an adverse Hawai‘i Supreme Court ruling and never resumed.

OCTOBER | “Hawaii’s New Capitol”

John Hamilton, executive director of the Downtown Improvement Association, explained the process of selecting a new Capitol site in Honolulu. The location was defined in a bill passed by the Territorial Legislature as bounded by Hotel, Richards, Beretania and Punchbowl streets.

The “Civic Center” site was part of 52.8 acres of state-owned land that extended to the waterfront. The article pointed out that the “front door” to Honolulu was once the waterfront, but now that 4 out of 5 visitors arrived by air, “the front door is no longer the waterfront.”