Peter T Young

August 11, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Barrage Terraces

In pre-contact (prior to Captain Cook) times, kalo (taro) played a vital role in Hawaiian culture. It was not only the Hawaiians’ staple food, but the cultivation of kalo was at the very core of Hawaiian culture and identity.

The early Hawaiians probably planted kalo in marshes near the mouths of rivers. Over years of progressive expansion of kalo lo‘i (flooded taro patches, pondfields) up slopes and along rivers, kalo cultivation in Hawai‘i reached a unique level of engineering and sustainable sophistication.

Hawaiians knew the productive advantages of growing wetland taro and placed the greater effort in this area very early, when required to increase food production capabilities for the rapidly increasing number of people.

By the time of Captain Cook’s visits in 1778 and 1779, every large river valley in the islands contained many loʻi (pondfields,) and each was systematically irrigated by means of ditches delivering water to the fields spread throughout the valley.

Usually, water was fed into an irrigation ditch from a stream. A loose-rock dam built across the stream allowed water to flow between and over the top of the rocks to provide for farmers living downstream. The dam functioned to raise the water level just high enough at that point to permit water to flow into the ditch leading to the terraces.

In this way the amount and speed of the water could be controlled. If too much water was found to be flowing into the ditch, a few stones could be removed from the dam, thus lowering the water level and reducing the volume of water entering the ditch.

The speed of the flow of water into the pondfields was controlled by the length and slope of the ditch. By varying the length and grade of the ditch, its builders were able to maintain a constant and low-level gradient over variegated terrain. The flow through the pond fields was controlled by the height of the terraces.

Captain George Vancouver visited Hawai‘i in 1792 and wrote, “Our guides led us to the northward through the village [Waikiki], to an exceedingly well-made causeway, about twelve feet broad, with a ditch on each side.”

“This opened to our view a spacious plain…the major part appeared divided into fields of irregular shape and figure, which were separated from each other by low stone walls, and were in a very high state of cultivation.” (Vancouver)

In 1815, the explorer Kotzebue added to these descriptions by writing about the gardens and the artificial ponds that were scattered throughout the area:

“The luxuriant taro-fields, which might be properly called taro-lake, attracted my attention. Each of these consisted of about one hundred and sixty square feet, forms a regular square, and walled round with stones, like our basins.”

“This field or tank contained two feet of water, in whose slimy bottom the taro was planted, as it only grows in moist places. Each had two sluices. One to receive, and the other to let out, the water into the next field, whence it was carried farther.” (Kotzebue)

Of the lo‘i types, “More common are stone-faced pondfields constructed either on [alluvial] slopes or alluvial terraces (SB), but not directly in stream channels; this is the dominant pondfield type ….”

“[T]he stone facing is generally a veneer of one-stone or two-stone thickness. Such facings apparently add stability to pondfields on steeper slopes; they may also be a means of removing unwanted loose stone from the soil media.”

[But, they are not the only type of lo‘i.] “These pondfields have been artificially filled, in contrast to the barrage fields which catch stream sediment.” (Kirch)

Stone-walled barrage pondfields “are what Spencer and Hale (1961:8) term ‘narrow channel barrage terraces.’ They were constructed by building a barrage of stones across a narrow stream channel (usually intermittent or with little flow) …”

“… and allowing soil and rock to accumulate behind the stone facing, thus creating a level planting surface which spread and impounded the channel’s waterflow.” (Kirch)

The barrage was sometimes “in sequential system of terraces … [providing] high level of context for function as an agricultural terrace and/or for water or soil retention or movement”. (Kamakakūokalani)

David Malo explained how a taro garden could keep a large number of people in vegetable food continuously: “Some farmers did not plant a great deal at a time. They would plant a little, and after waiting a few months, they planted more land.”

“So they continued to plant a little at a time during the months suitable for planting. The food did not all ripen at once, and by this plan the supply was kept up for a long time and they had no lack of food.” (Malo)

An acre of irrigated pondfields produced as much as five times the amount of taro as an acre of dryland cultivation. Over a period of several years, irrigated pondfields could be as much as 10 or 15 times more productive than unirrigated taro gardens, as dryland gardens need to lie fallow for greater lengths of time than irrigated gardens.

Rev. Armstrong suggested that there would be ‘food enough for ten persons’ on an acre of average taro land in Honolulu, that is, subsistence for ten persons.

“With proper management, kalo (taro) land needs no rest. So the natives tell me. Let the water be kept constantly upon it and the weeds cleared out and that is all that is needed. The kalo plants, however, must be changed every crop. It requires about a year to bring a crop of kalo to maturity.” (Armstrong)

Rev. Johnson of Hanalei, Kauai, a noted wetland taro-producing valley, suggested that 25 people subsist on an acre of good taro land.

Writing from his experiences on the well-watered windward side of Oʻahu, Rev. Parker wrote: “An acre of kalo land would furnish food for from twenty to thirty persons, if properly taken care of. It will produce crops for a great many years in succession, without lying fallow any time.”

Rev. Bishop, writing from ʻEwa District on Oʻahu, suggested that 15-20 people could be fed from an acre of taro: “Good kalo land, irrigated by water, improves by cultivation. It only requires time enough between crops to rot the weeds, which serve as manure.”

Rev. Emerson lived and worked in Waialua District on Oʻahu where several large rivers and numerous springs watered the land. He wrote: “Twenty persons, I think can be fed on an acre of good kalo land.”

“The land can generally be cultivated perpetually, if it has two or three months between each crop, in which to decompose the weeds which might grow during the time the kalo was ripening.”

“I have a large kalo patch that has not been left to rest one month at a time for fifteen years, and yet it produces as largely as fifteen years since. I presume the same parch was cultivated centuries before I knew it. It requires one year for kalo to come to maturity.” (Bishop)

August 10, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pōhakuloa CCC Camp

In 1876, the legislature passed “An Act for the Protection and Preservation of Woods and Forests” in response to water crisis in Honolulu due to deforestation and decrease in stream flow Nuʻuanu Stream, the main source of water for Honolulu.

In 1882, the first government tree nursery was established to provide tree seedlings for reforestation of mauka lands above Honolulu. 50,000 tree seedlings are planted on the denuded slopes of Tantalus (Honolulu). (DLNR-DOFAW)

In 1903, the Hawaii Territorial Legislature passed Act 44 establishing the Board of Agriculture and Forestry, predating the USDA Forest Service by one year. Act 44 expanded on the Forestry Act of 1876 and provided the legal vehicle for the creation of reserves encompassing private as well as public lands.

The Forest Reserve System was created by the Territorial Government of Hawai’i through Act 44 on April 25, 1903. It was cooperative arrangement between the Hawai‘i Sugar Planters Association and the territorial government.

Plantations needed wood for fuel, but they also needed to keep the forests intact to draw precipitation from the trade winds, which in turn fed the irrigation systems in the cane fields below. (DLNR-DOFAW)

The first Territorial forester, Ralph S Hosmer, suggested that the forest had been declining in the uplands as a result of fire, grazing and insects. In order to preserve the forest, it was necessary to keep the ungulates out. From 1924 to 1926 hundreds of thousands of pigs, sheep, cattle and goats were reportedly removed from Hawaii’s Territorial forests.

But the planters were also worried about hunters in the woods starting fires from their camps. Likewise, the commercial ranchers were also wary of individual hunters who could also shoot cattle from the ranch. (Peter Mills)

Then the US economy took a hit … after a decade of national prosperity in the Roaring Twenties, Americans faced a national crisis after the Crash of 1929. The Great Depression saw an unemployment rate of more than twenty-five percent in the early 1930s. (pbs)

As a means to make work Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the New Deal; the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) succeeded the Emergency Conservation Work agency, which started in 1933. In 1939, the CCC became part of the Federal Security Agency. (It was eliminated in 1943.) (UH Mānoa)

The purpose of the CCC and its predecessors was to provide employment in forestry and conservation work. It “brought together two wasted resources, the young men and the land, in an effort to save both.” (NPS)

From FDR’s inauguration on March 4, 1933, to the induction of the first CCC enrollee, only 37 days had elapsed. The goals of the CCC according to the law were: “1) To provide employment (plus vocational training) and 2) To conserve and develop ‘the natural resources of the United States.’”

By the end of the third year, there were 2,158-CCC camps in the nation and 1,600,000-men had participated in the program. (NPS)

There were five primary CCC camps built in Hawaiʻi (the CCC Compound at Kokeʻe State Park, the most intact today; what is now a YMCA camp at Keʻanae on Maui; a research facility on the Big Island; Hawaiian Homes Property with only two buildings remaining on the Big Island; and part of Schofield Barracks in Wahiawa on Oʻahu.) Other temporary campgrounds were spotted in work areas around the Islands. (NPS)

While the first 57 CCC enrollees on Hawaiʻi Island began working in 1934, it was not until June of 1935 the first CCC camp was established (in Hawai‘i National Park – as Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park was originally called), which housed 200 enrollees.

The territorial foresters’ camp at Keanakolu was expanded into a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) field camp. All of these buildings are still standing today.

Additional camps were also constructed around Mauna Kea Forest Reserve boundaries to house crews of CCC enrollees. In 1935, a CCC camp was at Pōhakuloa. It included a cluster of buildings and tents that included a recreation/ dining hall, two bunkhouses, two cottages, seven cabins, and seven outbuildings.

Pu‘u Pōhakuloa is a cinder cone overlooking the PTA headquarters area on the Saddle Road. Pōhakuloa means long stone. It also refers to a deity of the forest lands that extended across Mauna Loa towards Mauna Kea. Pōhakuloa, the deity, was a form of the akua Kū, a lover of Poliʻahu, a patron of canoe makers, and in his human form an ʻolohe expert and woodworker,

The hill gives its name to the respective Pōhakuloa references in this area. One early name was associated with a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in this area.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) undertook fencing, road building and visitor facilities on Mauna Kea. The CCC built a stone cabin at Hale Pōhaku, which gained its name (house of stone) from that structure. The cabin at Hale Pōhaku provided a shelter for overnight hikers, hunters and snow players.

In 1935-36, as part of the effort to eradicate wild sheep from the mountain, the CCC took on the project of building a fence around the Mauna Kea Forest Reserve (over 60 miles of fencing). Sheep drives were then carried out in an attempt to eliminate the sheep from the reserve.

The CCC brought water down to Pōhakuloa from a mountain spring … “The CCC days … Up the gulch, up on the mountain, remember, they tapped one of the springs up there …”

“Yes, they had one of the pipes going up. You can see the pipe when you go, it’s coming down.” (Jess Hannah; Maly) “[T]hat water for Pōhakuloa, there’s a spring, Hopukani Spring. CCC boys built the pipeline.” (Davd Woodside; Maly) The spring provided a “continuous supply of pure water.” (Bryan; ASM) (Spring water is no longer used; water is trucked in from Hilo or Waimea.)

The advent of World War II brought an end to the CCC program, as the remaining manpower and funding for the program were redirected toward the war effort.

By July 1, 1942, all Territory of Hawaiʻi CCC camps were closed, transferred to the military, or abandoned. The Army operated Camp Pōhakuloa between 1943 and 1945. The army also took over the old CCC camp house at Pōhakuloa and used it during the war.

After the end of the CCC programs and World War II, the old CCC facilities at Pōhakuloa were primarily used by staff of the Territorial Divisions of Forestry, Fish and Game including lodging by sheep and bird hunters or by other members of the public seeking recreational accommodations.

“Sheep hunters usually gather at Pohakuloa, the lodge maintained by the Hawaiian Board of Forestry and Agriculture. Here they spend the night under piles of blankets (because of the 6,500 foot elevation, the nights are almost always cold) and start out before sunrise for the mountain ridges.”

“They climb to the ten thousand foot elevation, where wild sheep and goats are in abundance. The Board of Forestry encourages hunting, as the animals have caused serious erosion by eating vegetation, and some authorities believe that the sheep and goats will never be entirely exterminated.”

“In its desire to provide hunting facilities, the Territory maintains not only Pohakuloa lodge, with its bedding accommodations for fifty people, but smaller lodges at Kemole and Kahinahina.” (Paradise of the Pacific, May 1948; Maly)

In 1954, the Division of Territorial Parks was created, and the former CCC facilities became part of Pōhakuloa Park, also called “Pohakuloa Hunting Lodge”.

The division began a series of improvements that would eventually replace the existing CCC cabins with all new buildings. (No physical evidence of the original CCC structures remain, as they were removed by 1968.)

In August 1962, DLNR’s Division of State Parks officially assumed all responsibility for administering these facilities and booking overnight accommodations. Forestry, Fish and Game staff continued to use a number of older structures.

The transformation of the Pōhakuloa CCC camp into the Pōhakuloa Park and later Mauna Kea State Recreation Area happened between 1961 and 1970.

The first of these improvements was a picnic area south of the Saddle Road from the CCC cabins. In 1961, major improvements to the Park began with the addition of new cabins. The first three cabins, variously called the “Housekeeping,” “Family,” or “Vacation” cabins, were built northeast of the former CCC complex, followed by two more the following year.

These five identical cabins, built on post-and-pier foundations, were prefabricated cedar structures manufactured by Loxide Structures of Tacoma, Washington. The cabins were roofed with cedar shakes and were replaced with corrugated metal in 1989.

Each of these cabins was named after a native Hawaiian plant as illustrated by a wooden plaque near its door with the plant name. In 1963, the existing comfort station was built, using a combination of fir, pine, and hollow tile.

A new headquarters building, caretaker’s cabin, and a storage building were constructed. Each of these were pre-fabricated by Pan-Abode Company in Washington State. The buildings are tongue-in-groove cedar log cabins built on post-and-pier foundations and roofed with cedar shakes.

The two “Family” cabins (now the ADA accessible cabins) were also built near the cluster of vacation cabins on the other side of the recreation area. These cabins, like the other new buildings, were prefabricated tongue-ingroove cedar kit cabins supplied by the Pan-Abode Company.

With the construction of the Comfort Station, the park’s picnic area was relocated from south of Saddle Road to its present location.

At its meeting on March 28, 2014, BLNR approved the management transfer of the State Park to the Department of Parks and Recreation, County of Hawai‘i; and approved the withdrawal of the park area from the Mauna Kea Forest Reserve and set aside to the County for park purposes.

The park was renamed Gilbert Kahele Recreation Area in 2019. The late Hawai‘i Island State Senator, Gilbert Kahele, “worked just down the road from the recreation area for 34 years as Director of the Public Works Division at the Pōhakuloa Training Area.”

“When he served in the state legislature he was instrumental in achieving park improvements by way of the transfer of the management to Hawai‘i County.” (Kahele; DLNR Release) Lots here is from Cultural Surveys, ASM and Rosendahl.)

August 9, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Arcadia

“As one enters the grounds the pure style of the white structure is more impressive. Simplicity, which always spells tase, reigns supreme, and the grassy terrace on one side of the broad walk advancing to meet one, is a quiet spot of beauty …”

“… as well as a sign of the hospitality which will always endear the Governor and his wife to the public and their intimate friends.” (Evening Bulletin, Jan 18, 1908)

In 1907, a new home was built “where their old cottage stood for so many years”. (Evening Bulletin, Jan 18, 1908) “Arcadia” was “known as a center of culture and refinement”. (Hawaiian Gazette, June 20, 1899)

Born October 29, 1863, in Grass Valley, California, Walter Francis Frear was the son of Walter and Fannie E (Foster) Frear. He descended on his father’s side from Hughes Frere, a French Huguenot who emigrated to New York from Flanders in 1676 and was one of the twelve founders of New Paltz, New York. On his mother’s side, he is a descendant of George Soule, who came to America with the Mayflower Pilgrims.

Arriving in the Islands with his parents at the age of seven, Mr. Frear first saw Hawaii on Christmas morning, 1870. He graduated from O‘ahu College in 1881 and received his AB degree at Yale University in 1885.

After serving as an instructor at O‘ahu College, Mr. Frear entered Yale Law School, receiving an LL.B. degree in 1890 and was awarded the Jewell prize for the best examination at graduation. In 1910 the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by Yale University.

Returning to Hawaii, he was appointed second judge, First Circuit Court, by Queen Liliu‘okalani on January 1, 1893, just before the revolution which ended the monarchy, and was appointed second associate justice of the Supreme Court by the Provisional Government, March 7, 1893.

Frear married Mary Emma Dillingham Frear on August 1, 1893. Mary was a daughter of Benjamin F Dillingham, one of the most prominent businessmen and entrepreneurs in Hawaiʻi, and Emma Louise Smith, daughter of missionaries Rev and Mrs Lowell Smith, who had come to Hawaiʻi from New England in 1833.

During the Republic of Hawai‘i, Mr. Frear was made first associate justice of the Supreme Court, January 6, 1896. In 1898, following annexation by the US, he was appointed by President McKinley a member of the commission to recommend to Congress legislation concerning Hawaii.

Frear was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court, Territory of Hawai‘i, June 14, 1900, serving until August 15, 1907. He was appointed Hawai‘i’s third Governor in 1907 by President Roosevelt; Frear remained in office until 1913.

The Frear home, known as “Arcadia,” was located at 1434 Punahou Street. (Punahou74) “There is a feeling of space and comfort all over the house. Nothing is over-done. … The bedrooms are all dainty and possess the same restful atmosphere.” (Evening Bulletin, Jan 18, 1908)

“Always interested in the Greek language, the Frears chose a name in it for their home. Horses, cats and other pets also were often given Greek names. Arcadia has been variously translated as peace, rest an beauty, of ‘the home of pastoral simplicity and happiness.’ The Frears had originally met when he was her Greek teacher.” (Star Bulletin, April 10, 1965)

“It is certainly a house of culture, of rest, and of peace. That atmosphere pervades everything, and on feels on intimate terms with the host and hostess from the moment of entering it portals.”

“It is also a home, a place to live in, and the sympathetic natures of the occupants are felt immediately. That Governor and Mrs Frear will be one with the public and its needs goes without saying, for they believe heart and soul in ding all in their power for the general good of mankind.”

Walter died January 22, 1948 in Honolulu. Mary died on January 17, 1951. “Arcadia. The stately home … at 1434 Punahou St, together with all the land [about 3-acres] and improvements [was] bequeathed to Punahou School under the terms of Mrs’ Frear’s will … [and she] requests her residence be known as the ‘Walter and Mary Frear Hall.’”. (Honolulu Advertiser, Feb 2, 1951)

Punahou considered such options as faculty housing but, by the fall of 1955, the facility had been remodeled to accommodate the kindergarten. Classes were held there until May 1962. (Punahou74)

Then, “The present home will be torn down to make way for the new Arcadia … The project will be built and owned by the Central Union Church.” (Honolulu Advertiser, April 15, 1965)

“Punahou had announced plans for the retirement home there last October but for tax reasons decided to lease it to the [Central Union] church instead.” (Star Bulleting, Feb 25, 1965)

“Ground was broken … for the $7.4 million Arcadia ‘retirement’ apartment building to be located on the site of the old Frear home at 1434 Punahou Street.”

“Instead of the customary shovel-full of dirt, the ground-breaking ceremony featured a hitching-post ‘transplanting’. A metal hitching post at the side of the home, which dates back to 1907, was moved to a special container, which will be given a permanent niche when the Arcadia project is completed.” (Honolulu Advertiser, April 15, 1965)

August 8, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kindergarten

“When the school introduces and trains each child of society into membership within such a little community, saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guarantee of a larger society which is worthy, lovely and harmonious.”

“Passivity of attitude, mechanical massing of children, uniformity of curriculum and method are the typical points of the old education. It may be summed up by stating that the centre of gravity is outside the child.”

“Now the change which is coming into our education is the shifting of the centre of gravity. It is a change, a revolution, not unlike that introduced by Copernicus when the astronomical centre shifted from the earth to the sun. In this case the child becomes the sun about which the appliances of education revolve; he is the centre about which they are organized.” (Dewey; Wheeler)

Let’s look back …

The word kindergarten comes from the German language. Kinder means children and garten means garden. Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) started the first kindergarten, Garden of Children, in 1840. “Children are like tiny flowers; they are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers.” (Watertown Historical Society))

The idea of kindergartens began in Germany with Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852.) Germans moving to the US brought the idea over when they settled there. In 1855, in Watertown, Wisconsin, Mrs Carl Schurz, a former student of Froebel, established America’s first kindergarten. (Castle)

In Hawaiʻi, the earliest mention of a kindergarten program is in 1892 in connection with Francis Williams Damon’s work with the Chinese. Damon was interested in Chinese boys, and opened a kindergarten in the Chinese Mission on Fort Street. Charles Reed Bishop provided some financial support.

In 1893, the Woman’s Board of Missions for the Pacific Islands opened four kindergartens specializing in several racial groups: Portuguese, Japanese, Hawaiian and one for children of all other races. (CharlesReedBishop-org)

In Hawaiʻi, free kindergartens began under private support. The Islands’ first kindergarten teacher might have been Miss Birch Fanning, who arrived in Honolulu August 3, 1889.

Although she announced her plans to start her own kindergarten, she ended up as a teacher for Punahou Preparatory School on Beretania Street in 1892. This experience was short-lived, and Punahou did not begin a permanent kindergarten program until 1900.

Because of the success, the Woman’s Board of Missions, founded in 1878, organized four kindergartens in 1893. Separated along racial lines, they were organized for Japanese, Portuguese, Hawaiians, and for a group classified as “other races.” (Castle)

Local training of teachers began two years later for “select young ladies” who “have worked hard and acquired great proficiency in the mysteries of Froebel’s admirable system of training infant minds.”

The programs proved extremely popular; and, the work was exceeding the capacity of the Woman’s Board of Missions. As a result, the Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association of the Hawaiian Islands was established in 1895. (Forbes)

Because of its newness, the Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association was soon in search of an educational methodology to implement its mission. Harriet Castle, the guiding spirit of the Association, would be responsible for shaping this direction through importing the academic views of John Dewey, a friend of the Castle family.

Dewey’s theory, which would help to shape education for the 20th-century, resulted from his rejection of the rigid and formal approach to education that dominated schools in the late 19th-century. The old approach was based upon a psychology in which the child was thought of as a passive creature upon whom information and ideas had to be imposed. (Castle)

Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association, one of Hawaiʻi’s first eleemosynary organizations, offered the first teacher training program and free kindergarten to all of Hawaiʻi’s children.

Some of the children were taught in the old Mission School House, “the great single room … on Kawaiahaʻo Street. Cool, spacious, dignified, generous in the proportions of its ample length and breadth, of its lofty ceiling, of its deeply recessed windows….” (The Friend, December 1, 1924)

The early Mission School House, built about 1833-35 was the regular meeting place of the annual missionary gathering, known as the “General Meeting.” This building stood south of Kawaiahaʻo Church, at the foot of a lane. (Lyons)

In 1899, the Henry and Dorothy Castle Memorial Kindergarten (1899-1941) was founded, funded and operated by the Castle Foundation. Mary Castle used a major substantial part of the proceeds of the trust to fund a memorial to her late son and granddaughter. (This program established the reputation and identity of the foundation.) (Castle)

Castle asked Dewey to create a kindergarten modeled upon his educational theories. The facility was built on the Castle family homestead on King Street, where Henry was born and Dorothy spent her early years. The school was later turned over to the University of Hawaiʻi (founded eight years later in 1907) to operate.

Eventually, the teacher training program was eventually moved to what became the University of Hawaiʻi, and the kindergartens were taken over by the Territorial Department of Education. (KCAA)

Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association also established the first public playground in Honolulu in 1911, Beretania Playground, at the corner of Beretania and Smith streets in the heart of Chinatown. It was intended for boys and girls under ten, and for older girls accompanying the very young, and the “play garden” was open seven days a week from 9 am to 5 pm.

“In recognition of the truth of Joseph Lee’s declaration, ‘A boy without a playground is father to the man without a job’, the Free Kindergarten and Children’s Aid Association is making a valiant effort … to secure a trained playground worker for Honolulu.” (The Friend, April 1912)

Just like the private founders forming and funding the Kindergarten program, initially, private groups, rather than public agencies, undertook efforts to build playgrounds.

A major objective of private playground organizers was to convince city officials that public recreation ought to be a municipal responsibility. As a result, by the opening decade of the twentieth century most large American cities had established playgrounds owned and operated by municipal governments.

Free_Kindergarten_and_Children’s Aid-Castle

Socialization and food preparation-Castle Memorial Kindergarten-Castle-1910

Castle Memorial Kindergarten-Castle-1905

Henry Castle and his daughter Dorothy-HMCS

Breathing_Space_and_Wholesome_Play-(TheFriend)

Graduation Castle Memorial Kindergarten-Castle-1905

Honolulu and Vicinity-Dakin-Fire Insurance- 29-Map-1906-Kindergarten_noted

Some Early Playgrounds-GoogleEarth

August 7, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

“Nothing can touch it”

“‘When we first went to Napili,’ said Mrs Kep Aluli, ‘it was an isolated beach with one cottage on it. We loved it.’” Star Bulletin, Jan 14, 1970.

In 1956, Kep Aluli and Yoshio Ogami were successful bidders for two of the thirteen “choice Napili beach lots” [they bought lots 7 & 8] “at “Napili beach in the Kaanapali section of Lahaina”. These were through an auction of Territory of Hawai‘i properties. (Advertiser, July 2, 1956)

Shortly thereafter, it was reported that “Kep Aluli, Honolulu builder, is planning a hotel at Napili Beach”. The land acquired from the Territory plus an acquisition of adjoining property “gives the developers a two-acre, beach-frontage hotel site and another acre a hundred feet away for tennis courts and beach facilities.”

“Describing the location, Aluli said, ‘Nothing can touch it.’” (Star Bulletin, Sept 11, 1956)

Aluli and Ogami built the Mauian Hotel on this property and shortly thereafter the Napali Kai and Hale Napli (and later others) sprang up.

“An entirely new resort complex has developed around Napili Bay, pioneered by Honolulu’s Kep Aluli and Canadian investors.” Honolulu Advertiser, Feb 15, 1966)

“Beyond Kaanapali, in that heart of Lahaina around Napili Bay, the new era already seems to have arrived.” “If the muscle and brain of the new Lahaina are at Kaanapali, its heart is more easily found at Napili”. (Honolulu Advertiser, July 17, 1964)

Kep Aluli was my parents’ classmate at Punahou. Others in the extended Aluli family were classmates with me and my siblings. When we were kids, we used to visit different neighbor islands during the summer; the visits to the Alulis at Napili were a special treat.

(During an extended Punahou alumni celebration, some of our classmates went to Maui and stayed at the Mauian at Napili – I wonder if the arrangers and others knew of the generations of connection the place has back to Punahou (with Kep’s nephew being one of our classmates.))

Napili, meaning the joinings or the pili grass, is on the West end of Maui. This area is referred to as Hono a Pi‘ilani (the Bays of Piʻilani (aka Honoapiʻilani,); from South to North, six of the identified bays are Honokōwai (bay drawing fresh water), Honokeana (cave bay), Honokahua (sites bay,) Honolua (two bays), Honokōhau (bay drawing dew) and Hononana (animated bay).

Sweet potatoes were reportedly grown between Honokōhau and Kahakuloa, presumably on lower kula lands; Kahana Ahupua’a was known as a place of salt gathering for the people of Lahaina.

Coastal marine foraging and fishing were combined with more upland agricultural pursuits. People would have moved between the coast and the upland agricultural fields, using the full range of resources available within their ahupua‘a. Semi-permanent and permanent habitation probably occurred in both coastal and upland settings.

Whaling (centered at Lahaina Town) was the first commercial enterprise in West Maui, but it had more or less collapsed by the 1860s. Commercial sugar cane production was the next large business venture in West Maui, starting as early as 1863, and it was focused between Ka‘anapali and Lahaina.

In the later 19th century, lands in West Maui became part of the Campbell Estate. This was also the time that the Honolua Ranch was first established. Cattle ranching began then and was continued by Henry Perrine Baldwin, who acquired the lands from the Campbell Estate in 1890.

In addition to ranching, other early commercial activities included coffee farming. David T. Fleming became manager of Honolua Ranch. Fleming was well-versed in pineapple production from the Hai‘ku area and gradually began shifting the ranch’s initiative to pineapple production.

The Honolua Ranch/Baldwin Packers complex shifted from Honolua to Honokahua in 1915, and a pineapple cannery was constructed. A major commercial pineapple industry emerged in West Maui during the 1920s.

The plantation communities of Honokahua and Napili emerged and developed as the Honolua Ranch/Baldwin Packers pineapple operations grew. The population of the Lahaina area increased with the successful economic operations of the pineapple plantation.

Baldwin Packers merged with Maui Pineapple Company in 1962 to form Maui Land and Pineapple Company, Inc. After this time, much of the Honolua Ranch lands were converted for resort development. Kep Aluli expanded that into Napili. (Lots of information here is from Scientific Consultant Services.)