Put on your jeans, boots and denim shirts! Honokaa Western Week is coming up, and yee-haw, you don’t have to be a cowpoke to enjoy it.

Honokaa’s biggest annual celebration dates back to the 1940s. The town is on Hawaii island’s northern Hamakua Coast, where seaside sugar plantations were the backbone of the economy at the time. Ranches occupied the mauka lands.

Every summer, paniolo (cowboys) headed to Honokaa for a weekend of music, dancing, hearty food and rodeo competitions. Called Rodeo Days back then, the celebration was launched by the Honokaa Businessmen’s Association (now the Hono­kaa Business Assoc­iation) to bring the community together for paniolo-style fun.

Cowboys would bunk at the Andrade Hotel, sometimes eight or nine to a room. Crowds packed bars and restaurants, and a festive mood prevailed. Rodeo Days, old-timers say, was like Christmas.

The event kept growing, year after year, and its name was changed to reflect its expanded time frame. Honokaa Western Week now runs nine days, and the Saloon Girls Contest has been a highlight since its inception.

“In the beginning, judges posing as cowboys were on stage in a bar setting,” said Michelle Hartman, Western Week’s coordinator and president of the Honokaa Business Association. “Saloon girls served them drinks and performed for them. As you might imagine, it could get pretty rowdy.”

Today the much tamer Saloon Girls and Cowboys Got Talent contests are among the events.

“Where else in Hawaii will you find saloon girls and cowboys singing, dancing and playing music?” Hartman said. “The costumes are amazing and so are the performances. (Professional photographer) Sarah (Anderson) used to design a set to take portraits of the contestants until we realized the town is the real set; it has many wonderful buildings dating back to the early 1900s.”

Attendees determine the winners of the Portuguese Bean Soup and Sweet Bread Contest. For the soup category, the little plastic spoon they’re given to taste entries doubles as a ballot; they vote for their favorite by putting their spoon in a contestant’s container.

“Although Myrna Green has lived in Honokaa for 30 years, she entered the competition for the first time last year and wound up winning by many spoons,” Hartman said. “She loves to cook but had never made Portuguese bean soup before, so she looked at a lot of old local cookbooks to get ideas. Her winning soup was a combination of those ideas. She’ll be entering the contest again this year with a tweaked version of it.”

New at Western Week this year is “Cowboy Scar Stories,” a “talk story” session with longtime paniolo. They’ll be sharing tales of how they “earned” their scars working as cowboys — some funny, some exciting, some maybe a bit scary and strange.

“Western Week has become a tradition for many kamaaina in Hono­kaa,” Hartman said. “They can talk about times they rode in the parade as little kids or watched their uncle or grandpa rope bulls in the rodeo. For visitors it reveals a different side of Hawaii.

“When they walk down Mamane Street during the block party, they’re going to hear great local-­style country music. They’re going to smell horses. They’re going to see people dancing in the street. They’re going to eat shave ice, malasadas, kalua pig and local beef, which they probably haven’t tried before. And no matter where they’re from, they’re going to fit right in.”

About Honokaa

Hawaii island’s scenic Hamakua Coast stretches 52 miles north from Hilo to Waipio Valley. For 125 years its landscape and economy were dominated by sugar plantations, which started operating there in 1869.

Because Honokaa had the largest sugar mill on the coast, it became the second-biggest town on the island after Hilo. In the early 20th century, many former plantation employees settled and opened small family-run businesses there.

After World War II sugar growers throughout Hawaii faced increased competition from both foreign sugar companies and domestic producers of sugar beets and corn syrup. To cut costs, plantations began to consolidate.

In 1978 Honokaa Sugar Co. merged with Laupahoehoe Sugar Co., a T.H. Davies Co. plantation, and was renamed Davies Hamakua Plantation. When Francis S. Morgan bought it in 1984, it became Hamakua Sugar Co.

Unfortunately, like other plantations before it, Hamakua Sugar couldn’t remain solvent. The last sugar company on Hawaii island to close, it harvested its final crop on Oct. 10, 1994. The closure led many young adults in Honokaa to move closer to new job opportunities, including hotels in Kona.

Today coffee, ranching, vanilla and macadamia nut farms and other smaller-scale industries are thriving in Honokaa. New small businesses are opening, and residents seeking a quiet, rural lifestyle are moving in.

Honokaa is a great example of a small Hawaii town that is succeeding on its own terms that is, without supermarkets, big-box stores and sprawling residential subdivisions. Thanks to the grass-roots Historic Honokaa Town Project, the buildings from the early 1900s that define its identity are being restored and placed on the Hawaii and National Registers of Historic Places.

The community has banded together to promote cultural tourism. Key to that effort are events such as Western Week, which provide visitors with a richer experience and a deeper understanding of the history of the Hamakua Coast and the important role that Honokaa has played in it.

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For more information, go to historichonokaaproject.com.

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.