Elevation: 40 feet

Current Real Estate Stats 

Puunene was one of the last extant working sugar plantation villages on Maui. Until the mid-1970's the little village in the middle of the cane fields was centered around the Puunene sugar mill. It was divided into little "camps" for immigrant workers who were segregated by race.

One theory had it that this blatant division of laborers into their various ethnic groupings would help the workers maintain the cultural values they had brought with them from their homelands as well as ease the transition into plantation life for the newly arrived immigrants. (It also made it easier to control and manipulate the workers, but that wasn't mentioned much.)

The village had little camp stores and company-owned and -maintained worker housing. The deteriorating houses in the camp were gradually dismantled as the workers were encouraged to move away to other housing alternatives. Sugar cane fields have taken over areas where the old camps once stood.

Billowing smoke still emerges from the mill at regular intervals, and the ditches around the mill run with the water from the mill. Next to the old mill, one of the world's largest biomass power plants burns bagasse, the residue sugar cane fibers that remains after the sugar has been extracted. The electricity generated is used to run the mill machinery. Excess electricity is sold to Maui Electric.

The former home of the mill's superintendent now houses the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum. This little museum is dedicated to the history of sugar in Hawaii, with special emphasis on the history of sugar on Maui.

Puunene means "Nene goose hill." There was once a red cinder cone near Puunene. It no longer exists. The cinders that made up the hill were used for road construction and other building projects.

Between the four and five-mile markers on the Mokulele Highway (Hwy 311), there's the Maui Raceway Park. The Navy built a landing strip there during World War II for their carrier planes. The area is dotted by old bunkers left over from those days. Later the area was used by the sugar company for their crop dusters. The state has since granted the land to the County and the old landing strip makes a great drag racing strip.