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(Courtesy of Hawaii Farm Trails)
The office for Puu O Hoku Ranch blends well into its environment. The rustic, Hawaiian-style building with its inset lanai, shingled walls, and double-pitched hipped roof originally also served as the ranch store. San Francisco businessman Paul Fagan and his wife, Helene, acquired Puu O Hoku Ranch in June 1933, and, with the assistance of the University of Hawaii Agricultural Extension Service, had seven hundred acres cleared of lantana and planted in grazing grass by October of that year. Here they intended to raise poultry and dairy cows. The poultry, including chickens, turkeys, ostriches, partridge, and pheasants, did not prove practical, but the Hereford herd did. In 1935, the ranch purchased an additional nine thousand acres from the Bishop Estate, which included most of Halawa Valley, swelling its size to twenty-eight thousand acres. Three years later, the ranch operations expanded to include the breeding of thoroughbred horses and polo horses. In 1943, the Fagans purchased Kaeleku Sugar Company in Hana, on Maui, and started Hana Ranch. They sold Puu O Hoku Ranch in 1947, the same year their Hotel Hana Maui (MA50) opened. Since that time, the ranch has gone through several owners. It currently encompasses about fourteen thousand acres and remains an operating cattle ranch as well as a vacation retreat. In an effort to further diversify, banana, papaya, and awa are now grown.