According to Jaime Bagué in his publication Del Ingenio Azucarero Patriarcal a la Central Azucarera Corporativa, Hacienda Santa Elena was established in 1778 just west of La Plata River by Juan Rijos Feduchi, a European immigrant who came to Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic.  

Lizette Cabrera Salcedo in her book De los Bueyes al Vapor states that Hacienda Santa Elena was established during the last decade of the XVIII Century.  José Ferreras Pagán in his 1902 book Biografía de las Riquezas de Puerto Rico states that Santa Elena was established in 1790 by Juan Rijus Feduchi.

Available at the Library of Congress is the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER Report) prepared for Hacienda Santa Elena in 1977 which includes pictures by Jack E. Boucher.  The report states that in its early days, the 500 acre hacienda originally established in 1790 by Juan Rijos Feduchi, sheltered an oxen-driven vertical sugarcane crusher made out of wood in its imposing industrial building and that it once had a five-vat Jamaican Train and  a rum distillery.

According to the HAER Report, Rijos Feduchi sold the hacienda to a Dr. Figueras sometime during the late 1820s or early 1830s.  Ferrerás Pagán states that under the ownership of Dr. Figueras, Santa Elena was the first sugar factory to turn to steam on the North part of the island sometime between 1831 and 1839 (steam power technology was not introduced in Puerto Rico until 1831).  It was Dr. Figueras who added the iron structural reinforcements that allowed the old facilities to accept a new Mirrlees & Watson steam powered engine.  It is this architectural adaptation that represents the hacienda's most important characteristics.  

In 1891, Jaime Fonalledas Garriga (1837-1913), a Spanish immigrant from Catalonia who arrived in Puerto Rico in 1863, acquired Hacienda Santa Elena.  By 1917 all the sugar processing machinery and equipment had been dismantled and sold as scrap.  At that time, it still consisted of approximately 500 acres of which 100 were used to grow sugarcane.  The hacienda is today owned by a third generation Fonalledas family.

The court case Gauthier v. Fonalledas et al, 204 F.2d 480 (1st Cir. 1953) decided May 22, 1953 clears some popular missconceptions regarding the history of this hacienda.  First, it establishes that the last names of its original owner were Rijos Teduchi not Rijos or Rijus Feduchi.  Second, it is reasonable to assume that the hacienda was not sold to a Dr. Figueras and that the mentioned Dr. Figueras was indeed Miguel Folgueras Bosch (1820-1887), the husband of Mariana Rijos Correa, daughter of Juan Rijos Teduchi and his wife Nicolasa Correa.  Third, Jaime Fonalledas Garriga acquired the hacienda in 1891 in a judicial sale for unpaid debt related to money borrowed in 1885 from Jose Pons Bernard by Miguel Folgueras Bosch, acting for all of the members of the estate of Juan Rijos Teduchi and Nicolasa Correa.

Hacienda Santa Elena is supposedly the only remaining structures of an 18th Century sugar factory on the island, and the only one where the mill on the ground floor was driven by oxen on the second level.