During much of the nineteenth century, the land now occupied by these three towns was dedicated to ranching and agriculture, with rice, taro, and sweet potato predominating. Pearl City was Honolulu's first planned suburban development, laid out by civil engineer C. H. Kluegel. Its eight hundred lots were placed on the market by Benjamin Franklin Dillingham in 1889, and connected to the city by Dillingham's Oahu Railway and Land Company (OR&L) railroad. By June 1892, two hundred and fifty lots were sold. With the advent of the railroad, Waipahu and Aiea emerged as sugar plantation towns in the 1890s. Little architecture from that period remains, as the area experienced rapid suburbanization beginning in the 1960s, blurring the boundaries between the towns.
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