Economy | Page 120 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

October 3, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

You Lived Downtown, Because You Worked Downtown

… then came the tram to Pacific Heights.

The earliest residential subdivisions in the Islands appear to have been laid out by the government on the level areas between Thomas Square and Pawaʻa, initially under governmental auspices, during the 1880s.

The area was known as Kulaokahu‘a (“the plain of the boundary”) and commonly referred to as the Plains. 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, Pawa‘a and Mo‘ili‘ili.

In his review of the events of 1880, Thrum reported: “Building lots on the plains sold at auction by the Government the past summer averaged over $500, the lots ranging about 100 feet frontage by 150 feet in depth.”

Two years later he wrote: “The plains to the east of Honolulu proper are being rapidly built up with residences so that the blocks and streets are now well defined as far out as Punahou Street.”

Residential development soon extended in the mauka, ʻEwa and Waikīkī directions. In 1883, “a number of suburban lots adjoining Kapiʻolani Park [were] placed upon the market” and “realized good figures.”

In his retrospect for 1890, Thrum noted that “the government has held two or three sales of lots for building purposes adjacent to the city. Those on the slope of Punchbowl found ready applicants and lively competition. … “

During the same year, the Oʻahu Railway and Land Company sold lots at Pearl City, by their new railroad line.

New subdivisions “between Punchbowl slope and Punahou,” in Kaimuki, and on Pacific Heights appeared in the late 1890s.

In 1899 the Pacific Heights road was laid out by Mr. Wall, and sold by Hawaiʻi’s reported first subdivider, Mr. Charles S. Desky (who reportedly “pulled several shady land transactions.”)

By 1900, Honolulu had a population of more than 39,000 and was in the midst of a development boom, creating tremendous need for more housing. Charles Desky built the Pacific Heights Electric Railway to support the housing development he had created near downtown Honolulu.

It is the first “electric passenger road” in Hawaiʻi; as such it is the forerunner of a system which before many months stretched out from the City center in every direction.

Prior to the development, “That part of the slope toward the city was gentle, with many patches of guava trees, kalu bushes and stands of cactus (panini.) There were no large or tall trees up to the summit until where the kukui nut, ʻōhiʻa and koa trees started along the ridge to the Koʻolau range.”

A record of this enterprise appeared in Thrum’s Annual for 1900, which said Desky and his real estate developments:
“The Kaimuki addition and Pacific Heights tracts are attracting a number of selectors, and desirable residences are in course of construction in both of these sections. … Main roads and streets have also been constructed, and the Pacific Heights enterprise promises Honolulu its first electric road in the course of a few weeks, to be followed by the construction of an elegant hotel, plans of which are completed.”

Additional information about the building of the electric railway came in the Hawaiian Gazette of November 13, 1900:
“The installation of the Pacific Heights electric railway during the past week deserves more than passing notice. It marks the opening of a new era for Honolulu in more ways than one.”

“During the summer months, in the States, the electric cars that radiate from the cities into the country and to the seaside are crowded far into the night with thousands people who ride for the sheer luxury of getting out into fresh air; and as the price Is uniformly five cents for any distance, It brings within reach of the poorest a degree of comfort healthful exercise unknown before the advent of the electric car.”

“The new railway not only provides this feature, with a beautiful view thrown In. but It for the first time makes easily and quickly accessible the foothills back of the city, which are unquestionably among the most healthful of all residence locations.”

Advertisements in ‘The Friend;’ “PACIFIC HEIGHTS. Offers greater attractions and inducements as a site for choice residences than any other portion of Honolulu. The Pacific Heights Electric Railway Line affords easy access to all lots; and water and electric lights are supplied from independent systems at reasonable rates. To parties intending to purchase and improve, especially favorable terms will be given. For further particulars apply to Chas. S. Desky, Progress Block.”

“Mr. Desky is to be congratulated upon the successful inauguration of a large enterprise for one man to undertake to handle. The community should show their appreciation of his pluck by liberally patronizing the road, at the same time they will be getting more than they pay for.” (Hawaiian Gazette)

“In those days – there were only four automobiles on Oahu in 1901 – you lived downtown because you worked downtown, you couldn’t live in Kaimuki or in Manoa.” (star-bulletin)

“Unlike today, when we build a community, we send out a bus to service the people, but in those days they’d put a streetcar out there with nobody there. It was one of those ‘if you build it, they will come’ things.” (star-bulletin)

“The streetcars created neighborhoods. People could suddenly live elsewhere and find a way into town.”

Subdividing soon became a full-time occupation. In January 1898, Theodore F. Lansing and A. V. Gear formed the firm of Gear, Lansing & Co. and before the end of the year had subdivided a 10-acre tract in Makiki and had begun work on a 260-acre subdivision (with an option for another 260) in Kaimuki.

Maps of Honolulu in 1897 show few byways outside the central city. There were just a few little farm roads. Yet in 1900-1901, Mānoa, McCully and Kaimuki are all laid out with grids and it’s definitely because of the streetcars.

By 1904, the streetcars were averaging 18,327 riders a day, 365 days a year.

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Park your auto safely at home use the street car service.

October 1, 2019 by Peter T Young 5 Comments

Makapu‘u Point Lighthouse

The origin of the Pacific Ocean Division of the US Army Corps of Engineers goes back to 1905 when Lieutenant John R. Slattery became the first Honolulu District Engineer.

In the early years the District constructed lighthouses and improved harbors in the Territory of Hawaii and erected seacoast fortifications for the defense of Honolulu and Pearl harbors on the island of Oahu.

The direct cause of assigning a Corps of Engineers’ officer to Hawaii was neither river and harbor improvements nor construction of fortifications. Lieutenant John R. Slattery, four years out of West Point, arrived in Honolulu in February 1904 because Hawaii had been found “woefully deficient” in lighthouses.

This conclusion had been reached by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Pacific Islands and Puerto Rico during its investigation of the condition of lighthouses and other federal matters in the Territory in 1903.

The Corps of Engineers’ responsibilities concerning lights and other aids to navigation had begun in 1852. Because of past problems in the Treasury Department office responsible for the construction and operation of lights, the Congress had authorized the creation of a Lighthouse Board that year.

The coasts of the United States were divided into districts, of which the Pacific Coast became the Twelfth Lighthouse District with its office in San Francisco.

The Army Engineer assigned to the Twelfth District had responsibilities in the construction, inspection, and maintenance of aids to navigation from the Canadian to the Mexican border.

In the early days at San Francisco, this officer was at times the San Francisco Engineer District Officer and at times the staff engineer assigned to the U.S. Army’s Department of California.

By 1903, however, lighthouse duties had become so complex that an Army Engineer, at this time Lieutenant Colonel Thomas H. Handbury, with a staff of his own, had become the Twelfth Lighthouse District Engineer.

Unlike San Francisco Bay, the ports of Hawaii do not experience navigational problems caused by fog. Early efforts in Hawaii to aid seamen were centered on the erection of lights at harbor entrances and at a few dangerous points of land near sea lanes.

Most of these lights were “fixed,” that is, steady beams of light with no revolving apparatus, and were low-powered and of short range.

Of an estimated 35 lights in the islands before aids to navigation became a United States responsibility in 1904, 19 had been erected by the Hawaiian government and the other 16 were privately owned.

The first light to be erected is said to have been at the port of Kawaihae on the northwest coast of Hawaii. Privately owned, it was lit in 1859 to guide whaling vessels into the harbor. Another port heavily used by whalers was the Lahaina Roadstead, Maui.

Makapu‘u Point is the extreme southeastern point of the island of Oahu. To the east of it is the Ka‘iwi Channel, which passes between the islands of Oʻahu and Molokai.

Makapu‘u was a supernatural being who, after arriving from Tahiti, took up residence on the point now bearing her name.

This being’s defining feature was her set of eight bright eyes, which is reflected in her name Makapu‘u (meaning bulging eye.)

For years, there was no light on the entire northern coast of the Hawaiian Islands to guide ships or warn them as they approach those islands.

The lack of such a light not only rendered navigation at times very dangerous, but in bad weather or at night often compelled them to slow down and await clear weather or daylight.

With the increasing importance of commerce between the United States and the Hawaiian Islands, and the commerce passing the Hawaiian Islands and stopping at Honolulu, the need was evident for this aid to navigation

Essentially, all the commerce from the west coast of North America bound to Honolulu passes Makapuʻu Lighthouse.

On October 1, 1909, the light from another bright, bulging eye was seen on the rocky point of Makapu‘u as the giant lens in the Makapu‘u lighthouse was illuminated for the first time.

Although the tower is only 46-feet high, the light is 420-feet above the sea.

Makapu‘u Lighthouse has the largest lens of any lighthouse of the US, known as a hyper-radiant lens. The inside diameter is 8’2”, sufficient for several people to stand in.

The 115,000-candlepower light can be seen for 28-miles. The effectiveness of this lighthouse has been greatly increased in recent years through the establishment of a radio beacon at the station; radio signals may be heard 200 and more miles at sea.

The lighthouse and about 5,000-square feet around it are owned by the Coast Guard and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The rest of the surrounding area – about 40 acres including a lookout – belongs to the State and is under the control of State Parks within DLNR, which maintains a public wayside park and trail to the vicinity of the Makapu‘u Lighthouse.

The Makapu‘u Point trail, within Ka Iwi State Scenic Shoreline, offers outstanding views of O‘ahu’s southeastern coastline, including Koko Head and Koko Crater.

From the trail’s destination at Makapu‘u Head, there are also magnificent views of the windward coast and offshore islets, as well as the historic red-roofed Makapu‘u Lighthouse (the lighthouse itself is off-limits).

On a clear day, you may even see Molokai and Lāna‘i.

The offshore islets (Mānana – Rabbit Island and Kāohikaipu – Flat Island) are wildlife sanctuaries for Hawaiian seabirds.

This trail is an excellent place to view migrating humpback whales in season (November-May). An interpretive sign and viewing scope along the trail help you view and identify the whales seen from this location.

This is a moderate 2-mile hike that is paved but is a bit steep in spots. There is no shade or restroom facilities along this trail (start before noon due to the heat, bring plenty of water and wear sunscreen.) STAY ON THE TRAIL.

When I was at DLNR, we finally made necessary improvements to get hikers’ parked cars off Kalanianaole Highway and into parking lots (one at the Makapuʻu Beach overlook and a larger on at the head of the Makapuʻu Point trail.)

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Makapuu Light House – Site before Sea Life Park

Makapuu_Lighthouse-vthawaii-com

Makapuu Signal Company-1929

Lighthouse Keeper John Sweeney-1934

Makepuu_point_light-1989

Makapuu-Lighthouse-(NationalGeographic)

Makapuu_Point_Lighthouse

Makapuu_Lighthouse_From_Above_Makapuu_Beach

September 25, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Merchant Street

Once the main street of the financial and governmental functions in the city, Merchant Street was Honolulu’s earliest commercial center. Dating from 1854, these buildings help tell the story of the growth and development of Honolulu’s professional and business community.

The variety of architectural styles depict the changing attitudes and living patterns during the emergence of Honolulu as a major city.

Melchers (1854)

The oldest commercial building in Honolulu, erected in 1854, is Melchers Building at 51 Merchant Street, built for the retail firm of Melchers and Reiner.

Its original coral stone walls are no longer visible under its layers of stucco and paint, and it now houses city government offices, not private businesses.

Kamehameha V Post Office (1871)

The Kingdom of Hawai‘i instituted a postal system in 1851, issuing 5 and 13 cent stamps for letters and a 2 cent stamp for papers.

Operated as a private concession for many years, the postal service expanded its work in the 1860s. David Kalākaua, later Hawaii’s monarch, ran the service from 1862 to 1865. The Kamehameha V Post Office at the corner of Merchant and Bethel Streets was the first building in Hawaiʻi to be constructed entirely of precast concrete blocks reinforced with iron bars.

It was built by JG Osborne in 1871 and the success of this new method was replicated on a much grander scale the next year in the royal palace, Aliʻiōlani Hale. In 1900, the old Post Office became a unit of the U.S. Postal System.

Bishop Bank (1878)

Charles Reed Bishop moved to Honolulu in 1846; married Bernice Pauahi, in 1850; and Bishop started the first bank in Hawaiʻi, the Bishop & Co. Bank in 1858.

The Bishop Bank Building at 63 Merchant Street was the earliest of the Italianate (or Renaissance Revival) structures on the street, built in 1878 and designed by Thomas J. Baker (one of the architects of ʻIolani Palace.)

In 1925, Bishop Bank moved to much larger quarters along “Bankers Row” on Bishop Street, and later changed its name to First Hawaiian Bank, now the largest in the state. The building, now known as the Harriet Bouslog Building, houses the offices of the Harriet Bouslog Labor Scholarship Fund and the Bouslog/Sawyer Trusts.

The Friend Building (1887 and 1900)

This site was the approximate location of the Oʻahu Bethel Church established in 1837. Reverend Samuel C. Damon (1815-1885) founded the English-language paper ‘The Friend’ in 1843 and ran the paper from this earlier site of the Seamen’s Bethel Church until his death in 1885.

The Chinatown fire of 1886 destroyed the original Seaman’s Bethel building. In 1887, builder George Lucas, erected a single, two-story brick building on the makai (ocean) side of this double parcel to house The Friend and other papers, both English language and Hawaiian, printed by the Press Publishing Company.

Royal Saloon (1890)

In 1862, the Hawaiian Government officially permitted the sale of “ardent spirits” after many years of typically unheeded suppression. An establishment selling alcohol to the many visiting sailors was located on this approximate site as early as 1873.

The bar was only one of scores of similar establishments in Honolulu’s harbor area during the nineteenth century. In 1890, local barkeeper and investor Walter C. Peacock built and probably designed the Royal Saloon, one year after the widening of Merchant Street.

TR Foster Building (1891)

Thomas R. Foster began his company, Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company, in 1878. The TR Foster Building at 902 Nuʻuanu Avenue was built as his headquarters in 1891.

In 1880, Foster had purchased the estate of the renowned botanist William Hillebrand (1821–1886), which was bequeathed to the city as Foster Botanical Garden at the death of his wife, Mary E. Foster, in 1930.

(When airplanes came to the Hawaiian Islands, the Inter-Island Navigation Company founded a subsidiary, Inter-Island Airways. In 1941, Inter-Island changed its name to Hawaiian Airlines and discontinued its steam boat service in 1947.)

Bishop Estate Building (1896)

In 1896, the Bishop Estate purchased the property and built the current building. Bishop Estate offices remained at this location until 1918, when the trust built another building close by on Kaʻahumanu Avenue.

The Bishop Estate Building at 71 Merchant Street was designed by architects Clinton Briggs Ripley and his junior partner, CW Dickey. It initially housed the executive offices of not only the Bishop Estate, but also the Charles Reed Bishop Trust and the Bernice P. Bishop Museum.

Constructed of dark lava from the Estate’s own quarries, its notable features include arches above the lower door and window frames, four rough stone pilasters on the upper level, and a corniced parapet along the roofline.

(The original Kamehameha School for Boys opened in 1887 on a site currently occupied by Bishop Museum. The girls’ school opened in 1894 nearby. By 1955, both schools moved to Kapālama Heights.)

Stangenwald Building (1901)

At six stories, the Stangenwald building was considered Hawaii’s first skyscraper and one of the most prestigious addresses in Honolulu. Designed by noted architect Charles William Dickey, construction of the steel-frame and brick building began in 1900 and the building was completed in 1901.

This building is of the most modern style of fire-proof architecture, designed with completeness of office conveniences equal to that of any city.” Honolulu’s business community seemed to agree, for its prestigious address was claimed by several of Honolulu’s most prominent company names …

The Henry Waterhouse Trust Company, B F Dillingham, Castle and Cooke, Alexander & Baldwin and C Brewer Companies. The Stangenwald remained the tallest structure until 1950, when the seven-story Edgewater Hotel in Waikīkī took over that title.

Judd Building (1898)

Dr. Gerrit P. Judd (1803-1873), a Protestant missionary who arrived in Hawai‘i in 1826, purchased the lot at the corner of Merchant and Fort Streets in 1861.

The Judd Building, designed by Oliver G. Traphagen, boasted Hawaii’s first passenger elevator when it opened in 1898. The building was the first home for the newly formed Bank of Hawaii, which remained on the ground floor until 1927, when the bank took over new premises on Bishop Street.

A fifth floor was added on top in the 1920s. The name commemorates Dr. Gerrit P. Judd, who became a close advisor to Kamehameha III and served as a minister in government of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i. He was a central figure in the creation of Hawai‘i’s constitution and helped to negotiate the return of Hawaiian sovereignty from Great Britain in 1843.

Yokohama Specie Bank (1909)

Overseas branches of the Yokohama Specie Bank (est. 1880) were chartered to act as agents of Imperial Japan. The Honolulu branch was the first successful Japanese bank in Hawaiʻi.

The building at 36 Merchant Street dates from 1909 and was designed by one of Honolulu’s most prolific architects, Henry Livingston Kerr, who considered it not just his own finest work, but the finest in the city at the time.

The brick and steel structure is L-shaped, with a corner entrance and a courtyard in back. The bank purchased this property, previously occupied by the 1855 Sailor’s Home, in 1907. During its operation, the bank set aside separate reception areas for Japanese-speaking, Chinese-speaking and English-speaking customers.

Honolulu Police Station (1931)

With one of the earliest police forces in the world, dating to 1834 and the reign of Kamehameha III (Kauikeaouli), the Kingdom of Hawaii had an earlier police station on King Street. The old Honolulu Police Station at 842 Bethel Street occupies the whole block of Merchant Street between Bethel Street and Nuʻuanu Avenue.

Built in 1931, it replaced an earlier brick building on the same site that dated from 1885 (the new structure is also known as the Walter Murray Gibson Building.)

At that time, the government also created a new Bethel Street extension, which linked Merchant Street to Queen Street. Architect Louis Davis designed it in a Spanish Mission Revival style that matches very well that of the newly built city hall, Honolulu Hale (1929.)

It served as the headquarters of the Honolulu Police Department until the latter moved to the old Sears building in Pawaʻa in 1967. It was renovated in the 1980s and now houses other city offices.

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Merchant_Street-Historic_District-Map-GoogleEarth
Honolulu_from_Merchant_Street_in_1885
Merchant-Fort_Streets-1898
Bishop Bank Building, 63 Merchant Street, Honolulu-1879
Bishop Bank Building, 63 Merchant Street, Honolulu-after_1878
Bishop Estate Building and Bishop Bank Building-(NPS)
Bishop Estate Building, 1896
Former Honolulu Hale Site
Honolulu Hale-(2) Honolulu Hale with its lookout, razed in 1917- (3) Kamehameha V Post Office, built in 1871
Judd Building (1898)
Judd_Building- Merchant Street & Fort Street Mall
Kamehameha V Post Office
Kamehameha V Post Office
Melchers Building, 51 Merchant Street
Melchers Building, 51 Merchant Street
Police Station – front, 1931
Royal Saloon (NPS)
Royal Saloon Building, 1890
Stangenwald_Office_Building,_Honolulu-(WC)-about_1901-architect C.W. Dickey
Stangenwald-Building-(Mid-PacificMagazine)-1913
T.R. Foster Building-PP-6-4-010
T.R. Foster Building
Yokohama Specie Bank (NPS)
Yokohama Specie Bank (NPS)

September 24, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

The “Parker”

Mokupāpapa literally means flat island, and the name was given to Kure Atoll by officials of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the 19th century.

At the time, Kure was known in the kingdom as Ocean Island, but Hawaiian Kingdom officials indicated that Kure was “known to ancient Hawaiians, named by them Moku Pāpapa and recognized as part of the Hawaiian Domain.”

Unlike all other islands and atolls in the NWHI chain (Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument,) Kure Atoll is the only land area owned by the state of Hawaiʻi – all of the other Northwestern Islands are owned by the US government.

Before the mid-19th century, Kure Atoll was visited by several ships and given new names each time. Many crews were stranded on Kure Atoll after being shipwrecked on the surrounding reefs and had to survive on the local seals, turtles and birds. Because of these incidents King Kalākaua sent Colonel JH Boyd as his Special Commissioner to Kure.

On September 20, 1886, Boyd took possession of the island, then-called Moku Pāpapa, for the Hawaiian government. The King ordered that a crude house be built on the island, with tanks for holding water and provisions for any other unfortunates who might be cast away there.

On September 24th 1842, the New Bedford whaler “Parker” was one of those earlier shipwrecks lost at Kure Atoll, during a fierce storm.

The seas crashed through the cabin windows at 2:00 am, and immediately the vessel went onto the reef. The ship had struck on the north side of the atoll and became a complete wreck in under an hour, very few provisions (1 peck of beans, 15 pounds of salted meat) being hastily salvaged by the unlucky survivors.

Cutaway masts and some of the floating spars were fashioned into a crude raft. It took the exhausted crew eight days to drift and guide the raft to the island on the southeastern side of the atoll.

There, some of the ship remains of the wrecked British whaler Gledstanes (lost in 1837) provided firewood and building materials. The Gledstanes’ dog, having gone wild during his years of isolation, provided some variety in the crew’s diet of seabirds and seals.

The castaways spent a hard eight months fighting for survival on the low island at the atoll. 120 Laysan albatross took flight with inscribed wooden tallies fixed to their legs in an attempt to alert rescuers.

More than 7,000 seabirds were killed for food and some 60 seals. Finally, the Captain and a few others were finally picked up from Ocean (Green) Island on April 16, 1843 by the ship James Stewart.

The rest of the crew remained on the island until May 2, when they were rescued by the New Bedford whaler Nassau and taken to Honolulu.

The physical remains of the ship fill in more details of the story. A team of maritime archaeologists first visited the site in 2002.

In 2006, a team of maritime archaeologists completed a mapping survey of the shipwreck site. Anchors, anchor chain, hull sheathing, copper fasteners, hawse pipes, windlass, rigging hardware, wire rope, bricks and other material are distributed in a line over 100 meters in length.

The team also discovered a trail of bricks and broken try pot shards (cauldrons used to render the whale oil from the blubber) in a small pass through the reef crest.

The survey outside the reef crest found almost no artifacts at all. It’s possible that the extremely violent storm and seas brought the vessel entirely into the shallow back reef area, hundreds of yards from the reef pass, where she grounded at a heading of 135 degrees magnetic. Deck features were washed over the side as the ship first entered the lagoon.

The lagoon site is relatively shallow, 8-18 feet of water. The bottom type is patch coral reef, coralline substrate and rubble and sand areas.

But is this wreck site really the whaler Parker?

The types of artifacts correspond to a mid-19th century whaler, and the site location is consistent with the historical report, but there is no conclusive piece of evidence as yet, so the identification as the Parker remains preliminary.

Site survey work in 2005 involved the removal of a few diagnostic artifacts (with oversight by the appropriate management agencies). These were conserved at the Heritage Resources Conservation Lab, California State University, Chico.

In 2008, a team returned to the site to document the site with high definition video, and also to recover a ship’s bell for conservation, education and outreach. The ship’s bell became part of an exhibit at the Monument’s Mokupāpapa Discovery Center, “Lost on a Reef”.

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American whaling ship Parker site plan completed in 2006 (NOAA)

Kure Chart

September 22, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Pu‘u O Kaimukī – Telegraph Hill

When King Kamehameha stationed his troops on the beaches of Waikīkī in preparation for the battle to take O‘ahu, he stationed lookouts at Pu‘u O Kaimukī (aka “Kaimukī Hill”) to spot enemies arriving by sea.

When Honolulu became a major port, “Kaimukī Hill” was used as a signal station (using semaphore technology,) giving it the name “telegraph hill.” It had broad view over the Pacific and line-of-sight to downtown Honolulu. Back then, they used this vantage point to spot ships coming in, and then conveyed the news to Honolulu.

Optical “telegraphs” or signaling devices have been traced back to ancient times (initially using torches) and were the fastest systems to convey messages over long distances; these “telegraphs” eventually moved toward semaphore towers.

If Internet and its communications channels are at the forefront of the signaling opportunities of the 21st century, the semaphore was the signals intelligence breakthrough at the time of Napoleon (and Washington and Kamehameha.)

Semaphore towers used arms and blades/paddles to convey messages; messages were conveyed/decoded based on the fixed positions of these arms.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the French revolutionized land-based communications with the construction of semaphore towers bearing rotating arms to fashion coded signals. The British quickly followed suit in that new era of signals intelligence.

The semaphore tower/semaphore line design was first thought up by Robert Hooke in 1684 and submitted to the Royal Society. The system was not implemented, though, due to military concerns.

However, this did lead to Claude Chappe developing the first visual telegraph in 1792 – eventually covering much of France via 556 stations. In France, this was the primary source of communication for military and national applications, until it became more widely used in the 1850s.

In Hawaiʻi, Kaimukī Hill had been used as a semaphore signal station ever since Fair Haven (Honolulu Harbor) became prominent in Hawaiian commerce. This semaphore station reported all incoming ships from Koko Head to Barber’s Point.

“Before the telephone was invented, and long before the system was in use in Honolulu, we had the lookout station on Telegraph Hill, which by means of a semaphore arrangement communicated with a station on the building (downtown.) Every merchant was supplied with the code, and whenever a schooner, a steamer, a mail packet, or a man of war, was sighted, the heart of the town knew it immediately.” (Hawaiian Star, February 10, 1899)

“From Telegraph Hill and the slopes toward Waiʻalae may be seen Koko Head, the beautiful expanse of ocean and on clear days the distant islands of Molokai, Lanai, and Maui. On the town side, the residents look over the town, across the cane fields to the Waianae range.” (Evening Bulletin, September 26, 1898)

“Mauka of Diamond Head, for a distance of three or four miles is a high ridge that vernacular geologists call a “hog back.” At the most elevated point on this ridge is the debris of Telegraph Hill (Kaimuki). In the olden days vessels coming from the north were signalled to the city from Kaimuki by a semaphore system, clear and effective. The town end of the line was a building on Kaahumanu street, then occupied as a sail loft.” (Hawaiian Gazette, January 13, 1899)

Reportedly, in 1857, a semaphore mechanism on Puʻu O Kaimukī, with large moveable arms, was attached to the top of a sixty-foot pole and used to signal to Honolulu.

The official receiving station from Kaimukī was on Merchant Street, but some have suggested other receiving stations at Kaʻahumanu Street and the foot of Nuʻuanu.

Upon receiving the message, a signal was broadcast to the town noting the names and ports of origin of each ship coming into view. This information was announced in Honolulu by loud proclamation and bell ringing, and preparation made to tow the vessel in by hand or bullock power.

In 1866, the roof of Honolulu Hale on Merchant Street was fitted with a new marine lookout with a taller semaphore, making its signals accessible to a larger segment of the population.

This optical telegraph system was an important tool for residents of Honolulu. The signals were unique and people became familiar with them, so most could decode the signal and know which ships were coming.

Likewise, besides alerting the postmaster to the imminent arrival of the mail, it was helpful to merchants expecting new goods and people awaiting friends and relatives.

Semaphore was then called “marine telegraph”, and it seems logical that the early map-makers of Hawaiʻi would name the hill “Telegraph Hill.”

“When the telephone system got into working order the lookout station was moved to a position on Diamond Head which gave a view further along the channel, because it was no longer necessary for the station to be in full view of the city.” (Hawaiian Star, February 10, 1899)

Puʻu O Kaimukī had several colloquial names; one was Christmas Tree Park. There’s a bare metal Christmas-Tree-looking pole. It’s not a remnant of the prior semaphore communications, it’s just a Christmas tree, built by the City and County soon after the park’s christening in 1991. Every year since then the big metal tree gets hung with Christmas lights.

It’s also referred to as Reservoir Park, a reminder of the days in the early 1900s when the top of the hill housed a water storage tank for the Honolulu Water Works. Another name is Bunker Hill, from the World War II era when the spot became a handy surveillance bunker for the military.

It’s known today as Puʻu o Kaimukī Park and is just behind (makai) the Kaimukī Fire Station.

On November 13, 1900, the first Marconi wireless telegraph system was set up and messages were sent and received between Oʻahu and Molokaʻi across a twenty-eight mile channel. Military semaphore flag signals are still used, today

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