Rice was the major crop, with hundreds of acres under cultivation. Historically Taro, Sweet Potatoe, breadfruit, and bananas were also grown in the area. The trail over the Pali Pass in the Koolau Mountains was improved to a roadway at the turn of the last century. In the 1950s, local growers found that foreign and domestic competetion made them abandon rice and plant sweet potatoes and pineapple. This eventually failed too.
Today there are local pineapple and other crops in the stores from local gardens and plots.
In 1918 the first military Reservation was built on Makapu Point on Kaneohe Bay. It is now Marine Base Hawaii, home to the 1st Brigades Major Ground Element, the Third Regiment, the Marine's largest infantry regiment. Long ago there were as many as 20 fishponds created in the waters of Kaneohe Bay to farm fish. Only one or two survive today. Drivers in the 1960s had two tunnels connecting the Windward and Northshores of Oahu to the Honolulu side of the island.