Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sutter’s Hawaiians

Early California history is closely linked with Hawaii. (Kenn)

“[I]n December 1838, there arrived in Honolulu one of the most colorful soldiers of fortune to land on Hawaiian shores. This individual was Captain John Sutter, later to make his mark on California history, accompanied by a small party of followers.  The previous October, Sutter and his party had reached Fort Vancouver after an overland trek from Missouri.”

“He was welcomed at Fort Vancouver and treated generously. An excellent raconteur with an active imagination (his title of former Captain in the Swiss Guards serving France was entirely his own invention), a congenial guest, part visionary and part con man, Sutter’s presence enlivened this active but still relatively isolated post.” (Spoehr)

“It was in the latter part of 1838 that Captain John Sutter arrived in Honolulu from Oregon on his way to California where he hoped to make his fortune, and where he realized his ambition until gold was discovered on his land when he lost everything in the turmoil that followed.”

“Sutter was a citizen of the Principality of the Grand Dutchy of Baden, Germany, where he left his wife and four children to seek his fortune in America. After crossing two oceans and a continent, Sutter found himself in Honolulu where he remained for five months, eagerly awaiting passage to California.”

“He made friends with Honolulu merchants and participated in a few business ventures, one of which was to purchase the abandoned ship Clementine moored in the harbor. He served as supercargo, sailing first to Sitka, Alaska, then to Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, where he disembarked with some Sandwich Islanders.”

“There were contracted to serve him for three years at ten dollars each per month …. He was to pay their passage back to Hawaii after that time. The actual number of Hawaiians who accompanied Sutter is not definitely known. Sutter claimed there were ten, eight men and two women, while William Heath Davis numbered eight, four men and four women.” (Kenn)

“Sutter was very poor on names and referred to the Sandwich Islanders merely as ‘Canacas,’ though he observed that had it not been for his Canacas he would not have been able to succeed in his California venture.  They helped to build his fort [near present-day Sacramento] said to be patterned after Kekuanohu (the Honolulu fort)”. (Kenn)

“The task of [Sutter’s] Hawaiian workers was not only to assist with building the fort, but to ensure labor tranquility amongst the hundreds of California natives (including Nisenan, Miwok, and Yokut) who would eventually be laboring at New Helvetia by 1846. Some Americans would compare these Sacramento Valley natives to Pacific Islanders.”  (Farnham)

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas. They were always faithful and loyal to me.” (Sutter)

From 1839 to 1849, Sutter’s Fort was the economic center of the first permanent European colonial settlement in California’s Central Valley. During that time, the Fort catalyzed patterns of change across California. Then, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

So, what happened to the Sutter Hawaiians and other Hawaiians on the continent?

“[B]y the mid-1800s, there were hundreds of Hawaiians in what is now Canada and California. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10% of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population.”  (Terrell)

“In the aftermath of the gold rush, many Hawaiians stayed in California. And as they settled in California, a number of Hawaiian men married local indigenous women. Which, it turns out, was a common occurrence up and down the West Coast.: (Terrell)

“Both Hawaiians and Indians in the Oregon Territory were explicitly excluded from the dominant society. From the mid-1860s onward, neither they nor their offspring were legally permitted to marry into the dominant society.”  (Barman & Watson)

As a result, Hawaiians were absorbed into local Native American communities through intermarriage. These Hawaiians were less likely to return to the Islands and leave their Native American wives and children behind. (Farnham)

“Sutter’s Hawaiians were to play an important role in the development of Sacramento, and their descendants, many of whom are living in Sacramento and environs today, have contributed greatly to the economic progress and welfare of the region. They became gold miners, salmon fishermen, snag boat operators, river boatmen, farmers, trappers, levee builders, and entertainers.” (Kenn)

“In the summer of 1865 some Hawaiian fishermen and their ‘wahine,’ who had sailed the placid Pacific in search of new realms for their nomad spirits, arrived in San Francisco bay only to discover that the cool fogs bred dire distress in lungs used to none but the fervid breezes of a tropic sea …”

“… so on they kept until, after a day and night of clear weather, they reached Vernon, a busy farming community on the banks of the Feather river.”

“Housed in picturesque huts on the east bank of the Feather river, near the thriving little town of Vernon, and gaining a livelihood

as best they may, and according to the tenets of their native land, caring not for the morrow so long as they may live and enjoy the day…”

“… a hundred or more big brown men and women and numerous tots form a colony where, peace and content rule their world, and where the salubrious climate Is engendering in this languorous race …”

“… an aptitude for labor a foreign element in their home taro-patches and rice field, with the sun shining upon them ten months of the year, and with the brown rush of waters homing myriad finny tribes for their ever ready rods …”

“… these dusky exiles pass their days rowing and fishing and pitching their tents at night in the shaggy thickets that clothe the river reaches, where with their ukuleles and guitars they build harmonies and weave legends into their cloth of dreams.”  (Parkhurst)

“And living up there close to the touch of nature, they have kept all of their race identity. When one of their people visits them bringing pol, ti leaves, kukui and other choice tidbits from home, they have barbecues, chowders and hula-hulas, and all of the delights that comprise a luau or Hawaiian feast.”  (Parkhurst)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Louis Alexander Williams

Mary Ellen Pleasant was an ardent Abolitionist, and she determined to assist John Brown.

She married John Pleasant (or Pleasants), who had been an overseer on the Smith plantation. She reportedly was involved in the Underground Railroad, and was so successful in assisting escaping slaves that she had “a price on her head in the South.” 

Pleasant moved to San Francisco and put her business acumen and entrepreneurial skills, not to mention her reputation as a noteworthy cook, to work. There was much wealth circulating in the heady days of the gold rush, but few luxuries in the area to spend it on.

Miners and merchants were clamoring for services, and Pleasant, according to San Francisco newspapers, rejected many offers of employment as a cook from people with means. Instead, with her name now well known, she opened a boarding house that provided lodging and food, both of which were scarce.

She expanded her business dealings by lending money to businessmen and miners at an interest rate of 10%, while also investing wisely on the advice of her influential boarders and other associates. During this time, she gained a reputation as “The Fabulous Negro Madam,” acting as a procurer for her male associates.  (Encyclopedia)

She invested her money wisely: Her businesses in San Francisco included laundries, dairies and exclusive restaurants — all of which were quite lucrative in a city filled with miners and single businessmen.

Concerned about racial equality, she became increasingly involved in helping others and in civil-rights activities during the 1850s and 1860s. Mary Ellen Pleasant, used her Gold Rush wealth to provide financial assistance for these causes; she also sought out and rescued slaves being held illegally in the California countryside.

Pleasant also found jobs in wealthy households for runaway slaves and developed an information network. One of the most widely circulated, albeit unsubstantiated, reports on Pleasant concerns her role in abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the US arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859.

She reportedly sailed to the East in 1858 and in Canada gave Brown $30,000 to finance his battle against slavery. When John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859, for murder and treason, a note found in his pocket read,

“The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.” Officials most likely believed it was written by a wealthy Northerner who had helped fund Brown’s attempt to incite, and arm, an enormous slave uprising by taking over an arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia. No one suspected that the note was written by a black woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant. (NY Times)

Some called her ‘Mammy’, but she asserted, “I am Mammy to no one.”

According to Pleasant, she was born free on August 19, 1814 in Philadelphia.  She claimed her father was Louis Alexander Williams, a native Hawaiian (‘a Kanaka from the Pacific Islands’) and her mother, Mary (her namesake) was a “full blooded Negress from Louisiana.”  (Ball etal)

Pleasant noted, “My father was a native Kanaka [Hawaiian] and my mother a full-blooded Louisiana negress.”

“Both were of large frame, but I think I must have got my physical strength from my father, who was, like most of his race, a giant in frame. His name was Louis Alexander Williams.”

“He was a man of great intelligence and had a fair education, judging from his letters.  He was a commercial man and imported silks from India.  He imported other things, but his main business was silk.”

“My mother’s name was Mary, and I was named after her, but I recall very little about her.  I don’t think she was as well educated as my father, for I don’t remember that she ever wrote me any letters.”

“When I was about six years of age, I was sent to Nantucket, Mass., to live with a Quaker woman named Hussey.  I never knew why I was sent there, and about all I know is that my first recollections of life dated from Nantucket.”

“When my father sent me to live with the Husseys, he also gave them, as I learned afterwards, plenty of money to have me educated, but they did not use it for that purpose, and that’s how I came to have no education.” (Mary Ellen Pleasant, autobiography)

“It is quite possible that a Pacific Islander named Louis Alexander Williams and a free black woman from Louisiana became the parents of a baby girl in Philadelphia in 1814, as Pleasant claimed.”

“According to the US Census there was an Alexander Williams living in Philadelphia in 1810 and 1820.  He is listed as a white male, which is how Pacific Islanders were recorded in the census at the time”.  (Hudson)

Pleasant had another Hawai‘i connection; images of Queen Emma are sometimes mistaken/mislabeled as Mary Ellen Pleasant.

“In 1880 Mammy was invited to the Palace Hotel to meet King Kalakaua of Hawaii.  It was the custom in San Francisco to always send an invitation to any major affair.  She invariably ‘regrets’ but on this occasion she wanted to attend because she wished to ask the king if it was true that she closely resembled the Dowager Queen Emma of Hawaii.”

“He obviously thought she did because when he left for Hawaii he carried with him a negative plate of Mammy’s full length portrait.” (Holdredge to Smyser; Hudson)

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Drifters

“Kamilo has been unaffectionately referred to as ‘Plastic Beach,’ and in some instances as ‘Trash Beach,’ and has even featured in headlines from the last few years as ‘one of the dirtiest places in the world.’” (Case)

A Hawaiian ‘Ōlelo Noeau tells  us, “Ka wahine alualu pu hala o Kamilo.” (The hala-pursuing woman of Kamilo.) It tells us that a current comes to Kamilo in Ka‘u from Halaaniani in Puna; whatever is tossed in the sea at Halaaniani floats into Kamilo.

As the story goes, Papua once left her husband in Puna and went to Ka’ū. He missed her so badly that he decided to send her a pretty loincloth she had made him. This might make her think of him and come back.

He wrapped the malo around a stem of a hala cluster, tied it securely in place with a cord, and tossed it into the sea. A few days later some women went fishing at Kamilo and noticed a hala cluster bobbing in the water.

Eagerly they tried to seize it until one of the women succeeded. Kapua watched as the string was untied and the malo unfolded. She knew that it was her husband’s plea to come home, so she returned to Puna.  (Bishop Museum)

This proverb and the experience at Kamilo are  examples “of what can surface when we take time to pay attention to our oceanic spaces, recognizing them as active places of meaning.”

“The sea, according to Michelle Huang, is ‘always heaving things up and hurling them back … [and] resists its role as the passive repository for all that humans think we have ‘tossed overboard or left behind.’’ … In conventional understandings, waste is what is ‘thrown away’ but Kamilo reminds us that there is no ‘away.’” (Case)

The Puna-Kamilo connection was tested in February 2021.  Andy Baker launched a small batch of custom orange plastic drifters into the outgoing ocean tide from the Puna District on the Big Island of Hawaii.

He wanted to test the story of Kapua and Papua and assembled 22 drifters made of durable plastic shapes collected from Kamilo Beach, with a fresh orange plate affixed stamped in raised letters with a request if found to text him.

After launching, we expected that beach clean-up crews at Kamilo would find them about two weeks later. But none of the drifters were reported found in the next two weeks, or even in the next two months.

However, 72-days later a vacationing beachcomber on Kauai texted that she found Orange Drifter #2 (OD2) among driftwood behind the Pono Kai Resort on the east coast of Kauai Island in Kapa’a.

Is this a unique improbable drift, or is there also a Kamilo-Kauai communication connection?

Whatever it is, it also reminds us of the multitude of other ocean currents that circle in, around and through the Pacific.

We are generally aware of the extensive use and nature of stone tools that the Hawaiians had and used.  But did they also have and use iron tools – if so, how did they get them?

It turns out iron knives were found in the hands of Hawaiians on Kauai on Captain Cook’s first visit in 1778.  Iron, crafted into various shapes, was observed on other islands, as well.

Cook noted that the people he met on Kauai were not “acquainted with our commodities, except iron; which however, it was plain, they had … in some quantity, brought to them at some distant period. … They asked for it by the name of hamaite.”  It is interesting to note that a Spanish word for iron ore is “Hematitas”.

“The only iron tools, or rather bits of iron, seen amongst them, and which they had before our arrival, were a piece of iron hoop about two inches long, fitted into a wooden handle, and another edge tool, which our people guessed to be made of the point of a broadsword.”  (Cook’s Journal)

Captain Clerke’s record (Jan. 23, 1778) notes, “This morning one of the midshipmen purchased of the natives a piece of iron lashed into a handle for a cutting instrument; it seems to me a piece of the blade of a cutlass; it has by no means the appearance of a modern acquisition …”

“… it looks to have been a good deal used and long in its present state; the midshipman … demanded of the man where he got it; the Indian pointed away to the SE ward, where he says there is an island called Tai, from whence it came.”  (Stokes)

Referring back to the midshipman’s information, it may be noted that there is no island named Tai to the south-east of Waimea, Kauai, where the matter was discussed, and since tai (kai) is the term for “sea” and the current sweeps up to Waimea from the south-east, it therefore appears that the implement was floated in, from the sea.

It was the reference that “people guessed to be made of the point of a broadsword” that caught the attention of Stokes (former Curator of Polynesian Ethnology and Curator-in-charge of the Bernice P Bishop Museum,) who speculated that rather than the end of a broadsword, the Hawaiians may have had a deba bocho (a Japanese fish-knife.)

Stokes noted that swords generally break straight across, making it difficult (impossible) to be “lashed into a handle.”  Rather, the deba bocho has a tang that is driven into a wooden handle.

The tang would have been concealed from view by Cook’s crew and “These men, ‘accustomed to the sword,’ would naturally think first in terms of weapons. It is certain they were unfamiliar with Japanese domestic utensils because Japan had then been isolated from foreigners for more than a century.” (Stokes)

Whether it actually was a knife and whether it drifted in on wreckage or was brought by a Japanese fisherman (before Cook’s arrival in the Islands) is not clear.

Japanese junks have been blown to sea, and finally stranded with their occupants upon distant islands, and have reached even the continent of America, in the 46th degree of north latitude.  (Jarves)

In 1806, the ‘Inawaka Maru,’ a small Japanese cargo ship, was shipwrecked off Japan and remained adrift in the Pacific for more than seventy days.  An American trading vessel, the Tabour, sailing eastward in the northern Pacific on her return voyage from China, rescued the emaciated crew of the Inawaka-maru and brought them to O‘ahu on May 5, 1806.  (Kona & Sinoto)

“On the second day after their arrival, the building of a house for the Japanese was started, probably on orders of the chief. More than fifty persons were engaged in cutting trees from the mountains and building a house with a thatched roof. Only four days after their arrival, the house was completed, and the eight Japanese moved in.”

The Japanese remained in Hawai’i for more than three months until an American ship offered to take them home; on August 17, 1806, all eight Japanese left O‘ahu aboard the Perseverance.  (Kona & Sinoto)

This was not the only early contact Japanese had with the Islands; in December, 1832, a Japanese junk was wrecked on O‘ahu, after having been tossed upon the ocean for eleven months.  But four, out of a crew of nine, survived.  Similar accidents, no doubt, happened centuries since.  (Jarves)

Today, we still find glass balls (fishing floats used by fishers in the Western Pacific).  By 1939, millions of Japanese glass floats were being used; although Japanese glass fishing floats are no longer being manufactured for fishing, there are thousands still floating in the Pacific Ocean. (By the 1940s, glass had replaced wood or cork throughout much of Europe, Russia, North America and Japan.)

Today most of the glass floats remaining in the ocean are stuck in a circular pattern of ocean currents in the North Pacific Gyre.

Off the east coast of Taiwan, the Kuroshio Current starts as a northern branch of the western-flowing North Equatorial Current.  It flows past Japan and meets the arctic waters of the Oyashio Current.

At this junction, the North Pacific Current (or Drift) is formed which travels east across the Pacific before slowing down in the Gulf of Alaska.

As it turns south, the California Current pushes the water into the North Equatorial Current once again, and the cycle continues.

Although the number of glass floats is decreasing steadily, many floats are still drifting on these ocean currents. Occasionally, storms or certain tidal conditions will break some floats from this circular pattern and bring them to ashore.

They most often end up on the beaches of Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Washington or Oregon in the United States, Taiwan or Canada.

Today, most of the remaining glass floats originated in Japan because it had a large deep-sea fishing industry which made extensive use of the floats; some were made by Taiwan, Korea and China.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

William Geiger

“Few men were more familiar with the history of the settlement and improvement of the Pacific coast than Dr. William Geiger, Jr.” (Smith, Oregon Bios Project)

Geiger was born in Angelica, Allegany County, NY, September 15, 1816, and was a son of William Geiger, a farmer by occupation.  In his native town he was reared and attended a private academy.

When he was about seventeen years of age he moved with his parents to Oakville, Monroe county, Michigan, where he remained from 1833 until 1837, when he started for Quincy, Ill.  About five miles from Quincy was the Mission Institute; Geiger became a student, there. (Smith, Oregon Bios Project)

In 1838 Geiger made plans to cross the plains to the Pacific coast, accompanied by a schoolmate by the name of Benson. (Smith, Oregon Bios Project)

Geiger had been appointed a missionary teacher by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and had been instructed to go to the Pacific Coast to do missionary work among the Indians.  When it came time for him to leave it was found that the association lacked the funds, with which to send him.

Having made up his mind to come to the Pacific Coast, he started out on his own account, traveling on horseback. He taught school at the Methodist Mission near Salem in 1840.  (History of the Columbia River Valley)

The next spring Geiger set out for California with the plan of meeting a party of his friends who were to rendezvous at Sutter’s Fort; but, going by sea to Monterey, he was forbidden to travel in the interior without a passport, which was not procurable short of getting one in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

So, Geiger headed to Hawaii with the intention, in part, to get a passport.

He then went to Honolulu, where he taught at the newly formed Chiefs’ Children’s School (Royal School) for about eight months, receiving $30 per month. (Smith, Oregon Bios Project and Berger)

In February 1841, having procured a passport, Geiger left Honolulu on the American ship Lausanne for Monterey, and later went in a coaster to San Francisco.

Back then San Francisco was a small place.  The Hudson Bay Company had a double log house there, and there was a combined saloon and billiard hall and a partly finished hotel, containing about one hundred people, fully half of whom were transients.

After a short time at San Francisco, Geiger went across the bay and secured some cattle, and took them up the river to Sutter’s Fort, where he remained until the spring of 1842.  In the meantime, he surveyed Captain Sutter’s claim for him and had charge of the fort while Sutter went to Monterey for supplies. 

For his services, Sutter gave Geiger land three miles square, situated in the forks of the Yuba and Feather rivers; but in the spring of 1842 Geiger traded everything he had to Captain Sutter for horses and mules and started for the states.

Later, in August 1842, Dr. Geiger sold many of his horses and mules to the emigrants, but took the remainder down the Willamette valley and for a while he lived with Alvin T Smith, near Forest Grove.

In October of that year, in compliance with a letter from Dr Whitman, Geiger started to take charge of the Whitman mission, remaining there during a part of 1842-43, or until Dr Whitman’s return in the fall of 1843.

Before this, he had secured a donation claim where the town of Salem now stands but gave it up later because it was wanted by a Methodist mission.  He next secured a donation claim of six hundred and forty acres south of what is now Cornelius.

In 1847, Geiger married Elizabeth Cornwall, a native of the south, and a sister of Rev. JA Cornwall, a Presbyterian minister located at Sodaville, Linn county, Oregon. He then engaged in farming, also further continuing, under Dr WN Griswold, the study of medicine, which he had first taken up some years before under the direction of Dr. Whitman.

Beginning as a ‘regular’ of the blood-letting, fever-starving sort, he became a convert to the virtues of the homoeopathic group, and began the practice of homeopathy in Forest Grove in 1864 and was undoubtedly the pioneer homeopathic physician of the Pacific coast. (Oregon Pioneers-com)

Dr Geiger served as clerk of Washington county while Oregon was still a territory and was afterward county surveyor for several years.  He surveyed land and from the time of his arrival in the northwest took an active part in its development.  He was an honored member of the State Medical Society of Oregon, in which he served as president.

Dr Geiger and his wife celebrated their golden wedding, having traveled life’s journey for a half century, in 1897. Almost four years passed before they were separated by death and then Dr. Geiger was called to his final rest, June 16, 1901.

He was a consistent Christian who held membership with the Presbyterian Church and in many ways he aided his fellow men, so that the world is better for his having lived. (Smith, Oregon Bios Project)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Royal Footsteps Along the Kona Coast

Royal Footsteps Along the Kona Coast Scenic Byway covers the entire length of Ali‘i Drive, seven miles of roadway and over seven centuries of Hawaiian Royalty archaeological, historic and cultural traditions that have shaped Hawai‘i into what it is today.
 
By whatever means (vehicle, transit, bicycle or on foot,) following the footsteps of ancient royalty and embracing the scenic beauty, natural and archaeological features, historic sites, associated cultural traditions and recreational opportunities will give the traveler a greater appreciation and understanding of Hawai‘i’s past and sense of place in the world.
 
Here are selected Points of Interest along the Scenic Byway:
 
1 – Kailua Seawall –  first built in 1900, the entry to Historic Kailua Village begins on Ali‘i Drive where its oceanfront promenade offers sweeping vistas of Kailua Bay, from Kamakahonu and Kailua Pier to Hulihe‘e Palace
 
2 – Pa o ‘Umi – marks the location of the landing and residence of the ruler ‘Umi-a-liloa (‘Umi) (ca. AD 1490-1525.)  Modern seawall and road construction has covered most of Pa o ‘Umi
 
3 – Hulihe‘e Palace – built in 1838, Kona’s only existing royal palace and one of three palaces in the United States
 
4 – Moku‘aikaua Church – built in 1837, it is the oldest Christian Church in Hawai‘i
 
5 – Hale Halawai – means “meeting house” and serves as a community meeting facility under the County Parks and Recreation program
 
6 – Ōneo Bay – scenic panoramic views of the shoreline and seasonal surfing -favorite place for residents and visitors to enjoy Kona’s famous sunsets
 
7 – Wai‘aha Beach Park – also known as Honl’s – “birth-beach and the birthplace” of modern bodyboarding (in 1971, Tom Morey created boogie board and first used it here)
 
8 – Kahului Bay – nicknamed Tiki’s after the adjacent small hotel (Kona Tiki Hotel,) lovely ocean vista
 
9 – Hale Halawai O Hōlualoa – stone church structure was built entirely by native Hawaiians under the direction of John D. Paris 1850-55
 
10 – Puapua‘a – popular local surf spot that once served as a canoe landing, now referred to as “Banyans”
 
11 – Hōlualoa Bay – oral traditions suggest King Kamehameha I learned to excel in board and canoe surfing in these very waters
 
12 – Hōlualoa Royal Center – Hōlualoa Royal Center includes Kamoa Point/Keolonahihi Complex, Keakealaniwahine Residential Complex and Kaluaokalani
 
13 – Jud Trail – constructed between 1849 and 1859 and intended to link the Kona area with Hilo – construction was abandoned when portions of the trail were covered by a lava flow in 1859
 
14 – Pāhoehoe Beach Park – County park with picnic and portable restroom facilities.  Ocean access is via coral rubble and rocky shore
 
15 – La‘aloa Beach Park – also known as White Sands, Magic Sands or Disappearing Sands
 
16 – La‘aloa Bay – small cove on the south side of the parking lot, entry point for snorkelers and divers
 
17 – Ku‘emanu Heiau – overlooks Kahalu‘u Bay and is associated with surfing – adjacent Waikui Pond was convenient for chiefs to bathe after an ocean outing
 
18 – St. Peter’s by the Sea Catholic Church – originally built in 1880, the church was dismantled and carried piece by piece to its present site at Kahalu’u in 1912
 
19 – Kahalu‘u Bay Beach Park – served as the Royal Center of Ali‘i, residence of Lonoikamakahiki ca. 1640-1660 and oral histories note its use by Alapa‘inui, Kalani‘ōpu‘u and Kamehameha — successive rulers from 1740-1760 on
 
20 – Helani Church –‘Ōhi‘amukumuku Heiau – old Helani Church (built in 1861 by Rev. John D. Paris) built atop the former ‘Ōhi‘amukumuku Heiau
 
21 – Hāpaiali‘i Heiau and Ke‘ekū Heiau – Hāpaiali‘i Heiau was built around 1411-1465; Ke‘ekū Heiau – after building it, Lonoikamakahiki attacked and defeated Kamalalawalu, king of Maui
 
22 – Mākole‘ā Heiau – also known as Ke‘ekūpua‘a, built (or consecrated) by Lonoikamakahiki and that it was used for prayers in general
 
23 – Heritage Corridor Overlook – pull out on Ali‘i Drive includes interpretive sign explaining the archaeological and historical significance of the lands of Kahalu‘u and Keauhou
 
24 – Royal Hōlua Slide – stone ramp nearly one mile in length that culminated at He‘eia Bay – this is the largest and best-preserved hōlua course, used in the extremely dangerous toboggan-like activity
 
25 – Lekeleke Burial Grounds – Following the death of Kamehameha I in 1819, Liholiho declared an end to the kapu system; Kekuaokalani (Liholiho’s cousin) and his wife Manono opposed the abolition and went to battle, here is the burial ground
 
S-1 – Kamakahonu Royal Center at Kailua Bay – residential compound of Kamehameha I from 1813 until his death in 1819; the center of political power in the Hawaiian kingdom during Kamehameha’s golden years
 
S-2 – Ahu‘ena Heiau – reconstructed by King Kamehameha the Great between 1812-1813; he dedicated it to Lono, god of healing and prosperity of the land
 
S-3 – Keauhou Royal Center at Keauhou Bay – ocean access at Keauhou Bay is superb and, just as boats use it today, canoe landings once dotted the shore.  The royal canoe landing of King Kamehameha I was located at Pueo Cove
 
S-4 – Kamehameha III (Kauikeaouli) Birthsite – son of Kamehameha I and high chiefess Keōpūolani, he was ruler of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i for thirty years from 1825-1854
 
We prepared the Corridor Management Plan (CMP) for the Royal Footsteps Along the Kona Coast Scenic Byway, the first CMP to be accepted by the State of Hawai‘i Department of Transportation.
 
We are proud and honored that American Planning Association-Hawai‘i Chapter selected Royal Footsteps Along the Kona Coast for the “Environment/Preservation Award”, Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation awarded the 2011 Historic Preservation Commendation and Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce awarded the 2011 Pualu Award for Culture & Heritage.