Categories

April 21, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Waiʻalae Shopping Center

In the mid-1800s, beyond Honolulu’s limits there were few residences. The population was growing toward and up Nuʻuanu, but Honolulu was hemmed on the Diamond Head end by the barren plains called Kulaokahuʻa.

Kulaokahu‘a translates as “the plain of the boundary.” Kulaokahu‘a was the comparatively level ground below Makiki Valley (between the mauka fertile valleys and the makai wetlands.) This included areas such as Kaka‘ako, Kewalo, Makiki, Pawaʻa and Mōʻiliʻili.

“It was so empty that after Punahou School opened in July 1842, mothers upstairs in the mission house could see children leave that institution and begin their trek across the barren waste. Trees shunned the place; only straggling livestock inhabited it.” (Greer)

William Lunalilo ended up with most of the area known as Kaimuki through the Great Māhele (1848.) Lunalilo was born on January 31, 1835 to High Chiefess Miriam ‘Auhea Kekāuluohi (Kuhina Nui, or Premier of the Hawaiian Kingdom and niece of Kamehameha I) and High Chief Charles Kanaʻina.

In 1884, the Kaimuki land was auctioned off. The rocky terrain held little value to its new owner, Dr. Trousseau, who was a “physician to the court of King Kalākaua”. Trousseau ended up giving his land to Senator Paul Isenberg. Theodore Lansing and AV Gear later bought the Kaimuki land (in 1898.) (Lee)

In 1887, Daniel Paul Rice Isenberg (Paulo Liʻiliʻi) (son of the Paul Isenberg, one of the founders of H. Hackfeld & Co. (Amfac) and one of the organizers of the Līhuʻe Sugar plantation) invested a large part of his inheritance in the development of a 3,000-acre ranch at Waiʻalae, Oʻahu.

In 1898, Kaimuki was still the barren, rocky and red-dirt land filled with panini, kiawe, and lantana. However, Lansing, a real estate agent, thought it was a great place to build a high class residential district. Initially, sales were slow.

But in 1900, the Chinatown fire forced folks to find places for new homes and businesses – many came to Kaimuki. This eventually led to the construction of the Lēʻahi Hospital (1901.) This and other activity in the area destroyed and/or displaced the landscape.

Kaimuki was envisioned as a suburb, where the residents could commute to Honolulu each day for work. To do this, transportation needed to be improved.

In 1888, the animal-powered tramcar service of Hawaiian Tramways ran track from downtown to Waikīkī. In 1900, the Tramway was taken over by the Honolulu Rapid Transit & Land Co (HRT.) That year, an electric trolley (tram line) was put into operation in Honolulu.

In town, in addition to service to the core Honolulu communities, HRT expanded to serve other opportunities. In the fall of 1901, a line was also sent up into central Mānoa. In 1902, a tram line was built to connect Waikīkī and downtown Honolulu.

The new Mānoa trolley opened the valley to development and rushed it into the expansive new century. In particular, it would help to sell a very new hilltop subdivision, “College Hills,” and also expand an unplanned little “village” along the only other road, East Mānoa. (Bouslog)

A little farther out, in Kaimuki, roads were built by the developers to connect the homes with Waiʻalae Avenue. The biggest boost to popularity occurred in 1903, when the Waiʻalae Avenue electric streetcar began service to Kapahulu and Koko Head Avenue.

As the automobile gained popularity and suburbs towards Koko Head were constructed, Waiʻalae Avenue was solidified as a major throughfare that boomed with business. (HHF)

Then, in 1927, the Territorial Hotel Co., as part of a promotional program to develop luxury travel trade to Hawaiʻi on the mother company’s Matson Navigation Co. cruise ships, built the Royal Hawaiian Hotel … and with it the Waiʻalae Golf Course.

The Golf Course was opened for play on February 1, 1927. In July 1927, the Isenberg ranch home near the mouth of Wai‘alae stream became the club house for the Wai‘alae Golf Course.

By the 1930s, the beachfront along Kahala Avenue was being developed with homes, while farming continued in other areas. In 1938, more than 50 pig farms were operating in the vicinity of Farmers Road and Kahala Avenues.

Residents of the area, citing an increase in rats and mice at Kahala, petitioned the territorial board of health to remove the pig farms (Honolulu Advertiser, December 20, 1938).

More houses were built.

Then, in 1954, the first phase of the Waiʻalae Shopping Center was built along Waiʻalae Avenue (designed by Victor Gruen – Walker Moody was awarded a $435,000 contract to build it.)

The three part plan called for covered courts between the three buildings and covered walks to the three parking areas. The center was anchored by Liberty House and a Piggly Wiggly supermarket (which later became Star Market.)

In 1957, a $1.2 million expansion began at Waiʻalae; Woolworth opened its first Hawaiʻi store there in 1958. Another new tenant, Waiʻalae Bowl opened that year, as well.

In 1967, construction to double the size of the Waiʻalae Shopping Center began, giving the center a total of 320,000-square feet of leasable space with fifty to sixty tenants, and 1,500 parking spaces.

Rather than the open-air, covered walkways, it was enclosed as a mall and air conditioned; all but a few stores opened on to the mall, rather than to the outside of the mall. It was the first of this type to open in Hawaiʻi. (They renamed it Kahala Mall.) (Mason)

At the time, Ala Moana Center was reported to be the largest mall in the world under single ownership and the provision of air conditioning at the Waiʻalae mall was a way to compete with the larger shopping center. (Mason)

On March 31, 2006, a flood hit the mall. Water affected an estimated 60 of 90-mall businesses, and knocked down two movie auditorium walls.

Kahala Mall is now comprised of approximately 464,000 square feet of gross leasable area. The mall houses 101 retail shops, entertainment venues and restaurants (including CVS/Longs Drugs, Whole Foods Market, Claire’s, Apple Store, Banana Republic, Macy’s, Ross Dress for Less, Starbucks, Jamba Juice, Radio Shack, Gamestop, Chili’s, California Pizza Kitchen and Consolidated Theatres.) (ksbe)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Waialae Shopping Center-1955

Waialae Shopping Center-1961

Waialae_Bowl at Waialae Shopping Center-kamaaina56-1960

Waialae_Panorama-Waialae Shopping Center-Kahala Mall-to left-kamaaina56-1966

Waialae_Panorama-Waialae Shopping Center-Kahala Mall-center-kamaaina56-1966

Jojan Restaurant at Waialae Shopping Center-later Reuben’s, later Spindrifter-kamaaina56-1960s

Kahala Mall-Christmas Stag Night-ilind-December 12, 1971

Kahala Mall-Christmas Stag Night-Picketers meet shoppers-ilind-1971

Kahala Mall-Christmas Stag Night-ilind-Men Only-1971

Kahala Mall-Christmas Stag Night-leaflet-ilind-1971

Kahala Mall-2006-flood-hnladvertiser

Hawaii_Five-O_Jack_Lord_Bust_outside Kahala Mall

April 20, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Walker Estate

Captain Heinrich Hackfeld was an adventurer born in Dalmenhorst, in Oldenberg, Germany. He was a sea captain on the China run when he sailed into Honolulu Harbor for provisions.

He stayed; he and his brother-in-law Johann Carl Pflueger founded a dry goods store called H Hackfeld and Company in 1849 in Honolulu. In 1881, Paul Isenberg became a partner.

George Rodiek was first vice president of H Hackfeld & Co; he also served as German consul in the Islands. In 1905, Rodiek built a two-story home with a series of garden featuring ferns, rocks and orchard in Nuʻuanu.

Then, WWI came (1914-1918.) In 1918, using the terms of the Trading with the Enemy Act and its amendments, the US government seized H Hackfeld & Company and ordered the sale of German-owned shares. (Jung)

The patriotic sounding “American Factors, Ltd,” the newly-formed Hawaiʻi-based corporation, whose largest shareholders included Alexander & Baldwin, C Brewer & Company, Castle & Cooke, HP Baldwin Ltd, Matson Navigation Company and Welch & Company, bought the H Hackfeld stock. (Jung)

The German-started H Hackfeld & Co became one of Hawaiʻi’s “Big Five.” (Hawaiʻi’s Big 5 were: Amfac – starting as Hackfeld & Company (1849;) Alexander & Baldwin (1870;) Theo H Davies (1845;) Castle & Cooke (1851) and C Brewer (1826.))

In 1918, Rodiek sold his Nuʻuanu home to Alan Wilcox who remained in it until the 1930s when it was taken over by Henry Alexander Walker (Walker became president of American Factors in the 1930s – American Factors shortened its name to “Amfac” in 1966.

The next year (1967,) Alexander’s son, Henry Alexander Walker became president and later Board Chairman. Over the next 15-years, Walker took Amfac from a company that largely depended on sugar production in Hawaiʻi to a broadly diversified conglomerate. After adding so many companies, Amfac sales were $1.3 billion by 1976, up from $575 million in 1971. (hbs-edu)

After subsequent sales of controlling interests in the company and liquidation of land and other assets, in 2002, the once dominant business in Hawaiʻi, the biggest of the Hawaiʻi Big Five, Amfac Hawaiʻi, LLC (Limited Liability Company) filed for federal bankruptcy protection. (TGI)

OK, back to the house … The nearly-6-acres of grounds were originally used for orchards and vegetables although the Japanese garden was put in shortly after the house was built (thought to be the oldest formal Japanese garden in Hawaiʻi,) the stones, lamps and images specially brought from Japan for it.

Wilcox expanded the gardens, but it was not until the Walkers took over the house that the grounds were made into a showplace. (NPS)

The Walkers turned the estate into world famous orchid gardens. Una Walker (Henry Sr’s wife) maintained the estate by making the grounds available for weddings and visitors and as a movie and television set.

The Walker residence is one of the few intact estates that were built in the upper Nuʻuanu Valley before and after the turn of the century. The Classical Revival style reflects an era of gracious living that for various reasons has passed from existence except in a few isolated cases. (NPS)

In 1973, the property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places; in addition more that 20 of its trees are listed as exceptional trees. (Being on the register doesn’t mean that a private landowner cannot demolish a historic site.)

In 1989, two years after Una’s death, the house and its grounds were sold by the Walker heirs to Masao Nangaku of Minami Group (USA) Inc. His intention was to restore the original house to be used as a corporate retreat; he renovated the house.

After Nangaku experienced financial problems, Richard Fried and partners took the property over and, in 1998, asked for planning permission to build a chapel to facilitate weddings on the site.

When this was refused, the estate was sold to Holy-eye (the Hawaii business arm of Forshang World Foundation and Forshang Buddhism World Center) the same day.

In 2005, Holy-Eye listed the estate for sale. In June 2006, real-estate developer TR Partners attempted to purchase the estate and planned to demolish the building and subdivide up to 20-home sites.

In 2006, Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation listed the Walker Estate to that year’s Most Endangered Historic Site (listing there calls attention to Historic resources that are often threatened by demolition, neglect, ignorance and/or apathy.)

The Taiwan and US flags are flown at the entrance to the property.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Walker_Estate

Walker_Estate-rear-view-(NPS)

Walker_Estate-front-main-entry-(NPS)

Walker_Estate-porte-cochere-(NPS)

Walker_Estate-master-bedroom-(NPS)

Walker_Estate-(historichawaiifoundation)

Walker_Estate-Japanese-Garden-(historichawaiifoundation)

Walker_Estate-Japanese_Garden-(NPS)

Walker_Estate-interior-(NPS)

Walker_Estate-(honoluluadvertiser)

Walker_Estate-Ficus_Tree-(outdoorcircle)

Walker_Estate-garden-(NPS)

Walker_Estate-Lawn

April 19, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Missionary, Educator … Former Slave

“Here begins the history of things known only to those who have bid the American shores a long adieu….” (Betsey Stockton)

The Second Company destined for the Sandwich Island Mission assembled at New Haven for the purpose of taking passage in the ship Thames, captain Closby, which was to sail on the 19th (November 1822.) (Congregational Magazine)

Among them was Betsey Stockton, “a colored young woman brought up in the family of the Rev. Ashbel Green, having been received with the Rev. Charles S Stewart & his wife, as a missionary to the Sandwich islands by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM.)”

Betsey Stockton was born into slavery in Princeton, New Jersey in 1798. She belonged to Robert Stockton, a local attorney. She was presented as a gift to Stockton’s daughter and son-in-law, the Rev. Ashbel Green, then President of Princeton College (later Princeton University.)

She was given books and was allowed to attend evening classes at Princeton Theological Seminary and was later freed. (Kealoha)

“(S)he is to be regarded & treated neither as an equal nor as a servant – but as an humble christian friend, embarked in the great enterprise of endeavoring to ameliorate the condition of the heathen generally, & especially to bring them to the saving knowledge of the truths as it is in Jesus.” (Portion of Approval for Betsey Stockton to be a Missionary to Hawaiʻi, ABCFM)

“On the 24th (March 1823,) we saw and made Owhyhee. At the first sight of the snow-capped mountains, I felt a strange sensation of joy and grief. It soon wore away, and as we sailed slowly past its windward side, we had a full view of all its grandeur.”

“The tops of the mountains are hidden in the clouds, and covered with perpetual snow. We could see with a glass the white banks, which brought the strong wintry blasts of our native country to our minds so forcibly, as almost to make me shiver.”

“Two or three canoes, loaded with natives, came to the ship … we asked them where the king was at Hawaii, or Oahu? They said at Oahu. We informed them that we were missionaries, come to live with them, and do them good. At which an old man exclaimed, in his native dialect, what may be thus translated – ‘That is very good, by and by, know God.’” (Stockton)

They landed on Oʻahu. “The Mission is in prosperous circumstances, and the hopes of its supporters here were never brighter. Truly the fields are already ripe for the harvest, and we may add, ‘The harvest is great, but the labourers are few.’”

“We have been received with open arms by the government and people, and twice the number of missionaries would have been joyfully hailed.” (Charles Samuel Stewart)

“On the 26th of May we heard that the barge was about to sail for Lahaina, with the old queen and princes; and that the queen (Keōpūolani) was desirous to have missionaries to accompany her; and that if missionaries would consent to go, the barge should wait two days for them.”

“(T)he king this morning hastened off in a small yacht, and left orders for the barge (the celebrated Cleopatra) and Waverley, to follow to Lahaina: they are now preparing to get under weigh, and I must secure a passage.”

“Two weeks after we arrived at the islands, we were sent to this place, which is considered the best part of the whole. The productions are melons, bananas, sweet potatoes, &c.” (Stockton)

“The prosperity of the mission is uninterrupted, and its prospects most encouraging. … We are very comfortably located at one of the most beautiful and important spots on the islands.”

“Mr. Richards and myself have an island with 20,000 inhabitants committed to our spiritual care – a solemn – a most responsible charge!” (Stewart)

“It was there, as (Betsey said,) that she opened a school for the common people which was certainly the first of the kind in Maui and probably the first in all Hawaii; for at the beginning the missionaries were chiefly engaged in the instructions of the chiefs and their families.” (Maui News, May 5, 1906)

“The 29th (June 1923) was the Sabbath. I went in the morning with the family to worship; the scene that presented itself was one that would have done an American’s heart good to have witnessed.”

“Our place of worship was nothing but an open place on the beach, with a large tree to shelter us; on the ground a large mat was laid, on which the chief persons sat. To the right there was a sofa, and a number of chairs; on these the missionaries, the king, and principal persons sat.”

“The kanakas, or lower class of people, sat on the ground in rows; leaving a passage open to the sea, from which the breeze was blowing. Mr. R. (Richards) addressed them from these words, ‘It is appointed unto all men once to die, and after death the judgment.’ Honoru acted as interpreter: the audience all appeared very solemn.” (Stockton)

“After service the favourite queen called me, and requested that I should take a seat with her on the sofa, which I did, although I could say but few words which she could understand. Soon after, biding them aroha I returned with the family. In the afternoon we had an English sermon at our house: about fifty were present, and behaved well.”

“In the morning one of the king’s boys came to the house, desiring to be instructed in English. Mr. S. (Stewart) thought it would be well for me to engage in the work at once. Accordingly I collected a proper number and commenced. I had four English, and six Hawaiian scholars. This, with the care of the family, I find as much as I can manage.” (Stockton)

Stockton has asked the mission to allow her “to create a school for the makaʻāinana (common people.) Stockton learned the Hawaiian Language and established a school in Maui where she taught English, Latin, History and Algebra. (Kealoha)

“It shows that a sincere desire to accomplish a good purpose need not be thwarted by other necessary engagements, however humble or exacting.” (Maui News, May 5, 1906)

Betsey Stockton set a new direction for education in the Islands. Stockton’s school was commended for its teaching proficiency, and later served as a model for the Hilo Boarding School and also for the Hampton Institute in Virginia, founded by General Samuel C. Armstrong. (Takara)

After residing in Hawaii for over two years, Betsey Stockton relocated to Cooperstown, New York, with the Stewarts. In subsequent years, she taught indigenous Canadian Indian students on Grape Island.

She later “led a movement to form the First Presbyterian Church of Colour in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1848.” In addition, between the period of 1848 to 1865, Stockton moved to Philadelphia to teach Black children.

Betsey Stockton made pioneering endeavors as a missionary in Hawaii, but her legacy is not well known. Still, Stockton’s school “set a new direction for education in the Islands … (It) served as a model for the Hilo Boarding School.”

Her teaching program have influence Samuel C Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, who also worked as a missionary in Hawaii during this period. After a full and productive life of service for the Lord, Betsey Stockton passed away in October of 1865 in Princeton, New Jersey. (Johnson)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Betsey_Stockton

P-15 Lahainaluna

Lahaina as seen from Lahainaluna (Maui) Miss Thurston, Attributed to possibly be Eliza Thurston (1807-1873)

The Mission Seminary at Lahainaluna on Maui in the 1830s, from Hiram Bingham I’s book

Hilo Boarding School and Mission Houses

Waiakea_Mission_The 7th Baron Lord Byron visited Hilo in 1825-painting by the Robert Dampier-only a few thatched huts at the time-1825

Hampton Normal & Agricultural Institute

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute

Witherspoon_St_Presbyterian_Church

Witherspoon_Street_Presbyterian_Church

April 18, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Yokohama Specie Bank

In 1860, a special Japanese envoy stopped in Honolulu on the way to Washington, DC, thus beginning formal recognition between the Japanese and Hawaiians.

In 1868, members of the Japanese working class came as contract labor to the relatively unpopulated young city of Honolulu to fill job openings in the sugar plantations.

Although the arrangement was originally temporary, many stayed, such that by 1908 the Japanese constituted 40% of the population of the Territory of Hawaiʻi, and had expanded to some of the professional fields. (LOC-HABS)

The government-supported Yokohama Specie Bank, founded in Japan in 1880, was international in origin. It developed an extensive network of branches, facilitating trade through its participation in foreign exchange activities, trade financing and even long-term financing of the raw material needs of Japanese industry. (Jones)

The bank was named after the ‘specie,’ a silver coin (as distinguished from bullion or paper money) used as an international currency for settling payments among traders. The word is Latin for “in kind;” we similarly use the term ‘species’ as a class of individuals having some common characteristics or qualities (distinct sort or kind.)

The Yokohama Specie Bank set up its first representative office in Shanghai, associated with the growing triangular cotton trade among Japan, India and China. It did so at the request of Japanese businessmen, who – when India ended free coinage of silver that year – had major difficulties with foreign exchange transactions. (Jones)

Japanese banking came to Hawaiʻi on August 8, 1892, with the opening of the Honolulu branch of the Yokohama Shokin Giriko, the Yokohama Specie Bank, Ltd.

The bank first operated from offices in the Japanese consulate. By 1900, the bank had moved to the Republic Building on King Street between Bethel and Fort Streets. Most of the bank’s depositors were Japanese, although the Chinese and Hawaiians had accounts there in smaller numbers.

It did not come under the monarchy’s jurisdiction in a commercial sense, as it was established as an agency and acted as a part of the Japanese consulate. However, it incorporated in Hawaiʻi in 1895, its increasing business making certification necessary under the Government’s Foreign Corporation Law. (LOC-HABS)

Although the Yokohama Specie Bank conducted a merchant bank business in Hawaiʻi, its principal function remained that of transacting foreign exchange business.

In 1907, the Yokohama Specie Bank bought the property at the corner of Merchant and Bethel Streets. From the mid-nineteenth century, this site had been occupied by the Sailor’s Home, which was a three-story structure whose cornerstone was laid by King Kamehameha IV on July 31, 1855.

The new bank building was the design of architect Harry Livingston Kerr, responsible for more than 900 buildings erected in Honolulu (from 1897 to 1937.)

The cornerstone was laid on October 20, 1908. A group photograph of the staff of the bank was included in the items placed in the cornerstone. It opened on the April 18, 1910, with separate receptions for Caucasians, Japanese and Chinese, and general public.

The brick and steel building was considered the most fireproof building in town, having no exposed wood (it has copper and marble window casings, copper doors and sashes.) The architect Kerr modestly proclaimed it “the finest structure in Honolulu today.”

Visitors to the new building were particularly struck by the steel desks, including roll tops, which were made to look like wood. The vaults, too, received much attention, the one on the first floor being for the deposit of cash, and two in the basement, one for storage and one for the safe deposit, with a capacity for 3,000 boxes.

The bank followed the Japanese teller procedure, in which one main cashier controlled all cash from a central desk. The tellers acted as his agents, working from desktops instead of the customary tellers’ cages.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941,) the building was confiscated by the Alien Custodian Agency.

During the war, the first floor was used for storing confiscated possessions, while the basement was converted into a 250-man drunk tank for inebriated military personnel. Showers, toilets and cell bars were installed.

In February of 1941 the United States Treasury Department started liquidating the $12,000,000 in assets of the three Japanese banks in Hawaii at that time.

The Yokohama Specie Bank was the hardest hit of the three, because it was the only one solely owned by Japanese interests. Despite claims filed, $1.3 million belonging to Japanese depositors was still impounded in 1943. (Non-enemy aliens and U.S. citizens received their impounded money almost immediately.) The Justice Department authorized payment on March 2, 1948.

By late 1949 it had paid out $1.1 million to Yokohama Specie Bank depositors. However, the government refused to pay any interest on the impounded funds, until forced to do so by lawsuits which were not settled until April of 1967.

The US Justice Department had completed liquidation of Yokohama Specie Bank assets when it was sold to City Realty in 1954. The city of Honolulu then leased the building for the Honolulu Police Department Traffic Citation Bureau. It’s now the downtown site for Cole Academy. It is part of the Merchant Street Historic District. (LOC-HABS) (Lots of information here is from HABS.)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Yokohama_Specie_Bank-MidPacific Magazine

Yokohama_Specie_Bank

Yokohama Specie Bank-up Nuuanu-SB

Yokohama Specie Bank (NPS)

Yokohama Specie Bank-side door-(NPS)

Yokohama Specie Bank-LOC-225555pv

Yokohama Specie Bank-(NPS)

Yokohama Specie Bank-delcampe

Yokohama Specie Bank Building-facade over entrance, 1909

Yokohama Specie Bank

Yokohama Specie Bank-poster

Yokohama Specie Bank Building, 1909

Yokohama Specie Bank

April 17, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Lake Waiau

Mauna Kea falls in the senior line genealogy. (Maly)

Former Queen Emma, widow of the late Alexander Liholiho Kamehameha (IV,) and David Kalakaua were in competition for the position of monarch of Hawai’i.

Both of them needed to prove their connection to the senior line and connect back to a wahi pana (celebrated and storied places). Kalakaua went to Kanaloa-Kahoʻolawe to bathe in the waters of the ocean god Kanaloa.

Emma went to the top of Mauna Kea to bathe in the waters of Waiau. The ceremony was to cleanse in Lake Waiau at the piko of the island.

The water caught at Lake Waiau was considered pure water of the gods much like the water caught in the piko of the kalo leaf, the nodes of bamboo or the coconut and is thought of as being pure. (Maly, Mauna-a-Wakea))

Papa is a goddess of earth and the underworld and mother of gods. Wakea is god of light and of the heavens who “opens the door of the sun”. (Beckwith)

“In the genealogy of Wakea it is said that Papa gave birth to these Islands. Another account has it that this group of islands were not begotten, but really made by the hands of Wakea himself.” (Malo)

Waiau is named for the mountain goddess, Waiau (Ka piko o Waiau), and home of the moʻo (water-form) goddess Moʻo-i-nanea.

It is a place where piko of newborn children were taken to ensure long life; and from which “ka wai kapu o Kane” (the sacred water of Kane) was collected. (Maly)

Lake Waiau, located at the 13,020-foot elevation, is on the Island of Hawaii, near the summit of Mauna Kea.

The ancient Hawaiians believed that spirits traveled to and from the spirit world through Lake Waiau, which had ‘no bottom.’ (Actually, the lake has been measured in modern times at 10 feet deep.) The lake freezes over in winter. (Allen)

Lake Waiau is a ‘perched’ water body, in which water is held in a depression by an impermeable substrate of layers of silty clay, interbedded with ash layers, and it has been proposed that permafrost also underlies the lake. It has also been suggested that permafrost surrounds the lake and provides a catchment that directs water into the lake. (USGS)

In 1830, Hiram Bingham and Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III) ascended Mauna Kea and stopped at Lake Waiau – Bingham noted, “In the morning we proceeded slowly upwards till about noon, when we came to banks of snow, and a pond of water partly covered with ice.”

“In his first contact with a snow bank, the juvenile king seemed highly delighted. He bounded and tumbled on it, grasped and handled and hastily examined pieces of it, then ran and offered a fragment of it in vain to his horse.”

“He assisted in cutting out blocks of it, which were wrapped up and sent down as curiosities to the regent and other chiefs, at Waimea, some twenty-eight miles distant.”

“These specimens of snow and ice, like what are found in the colder regions of the earth, excited their interest and gratified their curiosity, and pleased them much; not only by their novelty, but by the evidence thus given of a pleasant remembrance by the youthful king.”

“After refreshing and amusing ourselves at this cold mountain lake, we proceeded a little west of north, and soon reached the
lofty area which is surmounted by the ‘seven pillars’ which wisdom had hewed out and based upon it, or the several terminal peaks near each other, resting on what would otherwise be a somewhat irregular table land, or plain of some twelve miles circumference.” (Hiram Bingham)

Others made the ascent, “(T)hrough the sliding, weathered lava and cinders, to the pass to the right of the summit cone, and down the slope of the shoulder of the mountain wherein nestles the surprise of Mauna Kea – Lake Waiau.”

“Here, as the sun dipped behind the blue waters of the Pacific, curving up to meet it, we gazed with astonished eyes upon a tiny emerald gem, glacier made in some past time, set in a niche in the arid side of Mauna Kea.”

“We pitched our tent hurriedly by the green, cold lake, built a fire in the whipping trade wind, with its chilly bite, ate an early supper, and retired like packed sardines between our blankets. We were in an arctic zone under a tropic sky.”

“Taking our last look across the lake, we saw the image of fair Venus, streaming in white and shimmering light across the tiny, rippling waves. A thousand jewels glittered in the reflected phantom light of our neighbor planet. The next morning, ice over a half-inch thick was found in the gravel bar about the lake.” (Daingerfield, Paradise of the Pacific, December 1922; Maly)

Another noted, “At last, about 3 PM, we clambered over the rim of a low crater west of the central cones, and saw before us the famous lakelet of Waiau, near which we camped.”

“It is an oval sheet of the purist water, an acre and three quarters in extent, surrounded by an encircling ridge from 90 to 135 feet in height, except at the northwest corner, where there is an outlet, which was only two feet above the level of the lake at the time of our visit.”

“The overflow has worn out a deep ravine, which runs first to west and then to the southwest. A spring on the southern side of the mountain, called “Wai Hu”, is believed by the natives to be connected with this lake.”

“The elevation of Waiau is at least 13,050 feet, which is 600 feet higher than Fujiyama. There are few bodies of water in the world higher than this, except in Thibet or on the plateau of Pamir. No fish are found in its waters, nor do any water-fowl frequent its margins.” (Alexander, Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 14, 1892)

“Lake Waiau … is the highest lake within the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean Basin. The southern rim of the depression containing the lake is a low segment of a cinder cone, Pu‘u Waiau, on which rests moraine of the latest period of glaciation.”

“The lake water is perched on a layer of silt and mud washed into the basin from the sides of the cone and from the glacial moraine. … The lowest point of the rim is on the western side, where the lake water occasionally overflows into the headwaters of Pohakuloa Gulch.”

“The water is derived entirely from precipitation and runoff from the edges of the basin.” (Geology and Groundwater Resources of the Island of Hawaii, Stearns & Macdonald, 1946)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger