When visitors enter the Hawaii Plantation Museum, they see a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling hodgepodge of things, which, at first glance, looks like the staging area for a giant garage sale.

Wayne Subica sees treasures.

The owner and manager of the museum, Subica has been collecting memorabilia from Hawaii’s sugar plantation era for more than 50 years. Many of those items are exhibited in the museum.

"They represent life on the Big Island’s sugar plantations from the mid-1800s until 1996, when the last plantation on the island closed," Subica said. "They’re history; they’re treasures!"

Inspiration for the museum came from a 1950s-style soda fountain that Subica built at his Hilo home as a play area for his grandchildren, complete with a jukebox, old Coke glasses and a National Cash Register Co. register. His neighbor would come and show visiting friends the nostalgic nook.

"They were amazed at all the stuff I had collected," Subica said. "They said I should start a museum, so after I retired as the Hilo district conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service in 1999, I decided to do it."

Hawaii Plantation Museum opened in 2004 in a 1,500-square-foot spot in downtown Hilo. Subica moved it to its present Papaikou location in February.

The two-story, 4,000-square-foot building itself is an artifact. Dating from 1902, it was originally the Onomea Plantation Store. Shigeru Yoshiyama, one of the store’s employees, bought the business in 1950, and his family operated it as the S. Yoshiyama Store until 1997.

The building remained vacant until Hawaii Plantation Museum moved in. On display are more than 800 objects showing how plantation workers lived, worked and played. These items include tools and toys, signs and soda bottles, menus and mochi rice steamers.

Subica has spent hours "talking story" with plantation families and poring over photos, documents, and newspaper and magazine articles in library archives to glean information about each item.

For example, he learned that cars came to Hawaii in about 1901. Initially, the owners weren’t required to register or have license plates for them.

Issued in 1915, Hawaii’s first license plates were made of porcelain in California. A white one with the letters HAW is exhibited along with 13 other pre-statehood plates.

"HAW meant it was for a Big Island car," Subica said. "HON was for Honolulu. The other islands had to make their own plates. I heard some on Kauai were made of wood."

Other eye-catchers include a one-horse wagon with the words "P.C. Beamer Store 1905" inscribed on the side of the seat. "You know Keola Beamer, the musician?" Subica asked. "He was sitting on this wagon a few months ago. P.C. is his great-grandfather, Pete Beamer. Old-timers say Pete was Hawaii’s first recycler."

According to Subica, Beamer’s store in Hilo stood next to the Moses Co., which sold pianos and organs that were shipped in big wooden boxes held together with screws. Beamer asked the workers who unboxed the instruments to save the screws for him, which he separated by size and sold in his store.

A month ago, a family gave Subica toolboxes that had been made by the wife’s grandfather and great-grandfather who had worked as carpenters for Kohala Sugar Co.

"When you open the covers of the boxes, there are dates painted inside," Subica said. "The two boxes made by Mrs. Fujii’s great-grandfather have 1902 on them and the two made by her grandfather have 1923 and 1929 on them."

The boxes and the tools they contained were wonderful acquisitions in themselves. But in one of the boxes was a small envelope, yellowed with age, that delighted Subica even more. Mailed from California with two 6-cent stamps, it was addressed to the "Beamer Store, 110 Kam Avenue, Hilo, Hawaii, T.H. (Territory of Hawaii)."

Several screws and hinges were in the envelope. "The carpenters — Mrs. Fujii’s grandfather and great-grandfather — must’ve gone to Beamer’s store and bought those screws and hinges," Subica said. "Being the recycler that he was, Beamer cut the envelope at one end and used it as the ‘bag’ for their purchase. When I saw the envelope, I got goose bumps! It’s another treasure!"

All of the more than 80 signs in the museum are from defunct mom-and-pop businesses. The largest, from Sun Sun Lau restaurant, measures 16 feet long by 21⁄2 feet high and weighs more than 100 pounds.

THE SIGN that reads "G. MiyamotoCash and Carry" was donated by the shopkeeper’s son. "He told me (that) before the United States got involved in World War II, the sign also had the store’s name written in Japanese," Subica said. "After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, his father removed the Japanese characters and painted the sign red, white and blue with stars in the English letters of his name to show he was a patriot of the U.S. I have a photo of the store’s original sign with the Japanese characters."

Volunteers are organizing a second-floor exhibition area that will showcase household items, including dishes, an icebox, a kerosene stove, a redwood furo (bathtub), a fold-up crib and a charcoal iron.

"We’re building a replica of a plantation house," Subica said. "Visitors will walk up the steps of the lanai through the front door and into the different rooms. I already have more than enough stuff to furnish the rooms. We’re also going to display things on the second floor that show what families did for fun, including ukuleles, Little League uniforms and a 1920s phonograph that still works."

In years past, Subica went on digs, checked eBay, browsed in antique stores and frequented garage and estate sales in search of finds. He no longer does that very often because people are bringing things to him.

"Talk about treasures!" Subica said with a big smile. "We’ve got plenty of them — and all the stories that go with them."

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Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.