General | Page 245 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

May 7, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

HECO

In the late 1870s, ‘electricity’ was the talk of society. King Kalākaua had heard and read about this revolutionary new form of energy, and he arranged to meet Thomas Edison in New York in 1881 during the course of his world tour. (HECO)

In 1881, the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) was held in Paris; it was the first International Exposition of Electricity. The major events associated with the Fair included Thomas Edison’s electric lights, electrical distribution and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone.

During the King’s visit to NYC, the New-York Tribune (September 25, 1881) wrote an article about the King: “One of the sights that pleased him most was the Paris Electrical Exhibition. We spent some time there.”

“Kalākaua is going to introduce the electric light in his own kingdom; and he examined the different lamps on that account with the greatest interest. The life in Paris entertained him very much; they turned night into day there.”

Then, Charles Otto Berger, organized a demonstration of ‘electric light’ at ʻIolani Palace, on the night of July 26, 1886. To commemorate the occasion, a tea party was organized by Her Royal Highness the Princess Lili‘uokalani and Her Royal Highness the Princess Likelike.

The Royal Hawaiian Military Band played music and military companies marched in the palace square. An immense crowd gathered to see and enjoy the brightly lit palace that night. (HECO)

Shortly after this event, David Bowers Smith, a North Carolinian businessman living in Hawaiʻi, persuaded Kalākaua to install an electrical system on the palace grounds. The plant consisted of a small steam engine and a dynamo for incandescent lamps. On November 16, 1886 – Kalākaua’s birthday – ʻIolani Palace became the world’s first royal residence to be lit by electricity.

The government began exploring ways to establish its own power plant to light the streets of Honolulu. A decision was made to use the energy of flowing water to drive the turbines of a power plant built in Nuʻuanu Valley.

Water was taken in a pipeline running past Kaniakapūpū, then fed a hydroelectric plant in an area known as “Reservoir #1,” just above Oʻahu County Club. Power lines were strung on the existing Mutual Telephone Co poles in the area, down to downtown Honolulu.

In addition, by 1890, the Honolulu firm of EO Hall was installing small power plants at residential locations and supplying some businesses with power via wiring strung from a steam dynamo at their building in downtown Honolulu. Electricity was extended to 797 of Honolulu’s homes. (HECO)

The business of EO Hall & Son, Limited started in 1852 at the corner of Fort and King streets. In their early years, besides hardware, the stock consisted of dry goods of all kinds and quite an assortment of groceries.

The firm continued to deal in hardware, agricultural implements, dry goods, leather, paints and oils, silver-plated ware, wooden ware, tools of all kinds, kerosene oil, etc, until about the year 1878, when dry goods were dropped, except a few staple articles. (Alexander)

On May 7, 1891 several EO Hall corporate officers, under the direction of Jonathan Austin, filed with the Hawaiian government to form a partnership to produce and supply electricity as the Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO.) (HAER)

Five months later – on October 13, 1891 – the co-partnership was dissolved and Hawaiian Electric was incorporated, with total assets of $17,000 and William W Hall as its first President. (HECO)

The works of the company were in a 100 x 100-foot brick building at the corner of Alakea and Halekauwila streets; a large cold storage building was attached.

The cold storage plant was divided into fifteen rooms with temperature varying from 10 deg. to 42 deg. (F.) Meat markets, grocers, fruit and liquor dealers had taken up nearly all the available space of the plant.

The 2-story building had all the latest fittings as electric elevators, electric lights through all the rooms, overhead tracks in the large meat rooms, etc., etc. In the electrical department the company keeps a large stock of electrical fittings and was prepared to install electric plants and supply all the necessary fittings for house lighting. (Alexander)

On January 12, 1893, as one of her last official acts, Queen Lili‘uokalani approved legislation that empowered the government to provide and regulate the production of electricity in Honolulu. Her constitutional monarchy was overthrown five days later.

On May 3, HECO (the only bidder) was granted a 10-year franchise by the provisional Hawaiian Government to supply electricity to anyone in Honolulu.

The government retained control of the operation at Nuʻuanu and maintained it to operate streetlights when it was able. The following year HECO began operating from a generator plant near the corner of Alakea and Halekauwila Streets in Honolulu.

By 1906, HECO power lines extended to Waikiki and Manoa Valley, reaching over 2,500 customers. In 1916, substations fed by high voltage transmission lines came into use and replaced the older system of low voltage distribution lines. By this time HECO provided power to windward O‘ahu and to Pearl Harbor. (HAER)

Construction on the Waiau Power Plant began on June 3, 1937. It was HECO’s second power plant, after the existing Honolulu plant at Alakea Street. The Waiau Power Plant building was finished in June 1938.

During World War II, HECO provided vital electric power to the military for the war effort, sometimes blacking out residential service to be able to meet military demands.

More often, coordination between government and private sector resulted in altered work schedules to allow HECO’s power to flow to the military when they needed it.

A third power plant location was built in 1963 at Kahe Point in Leeward Oahu. Kahe Point would become the main power generating station for HECO, in the early 1990s. (HAER)

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Hawaiian Electric Company-PP-8-8-001-00001

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Hawaiian Electric displays the current electronic gadgets of the day in the mid 1930s

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May 6, 2016 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Foodland

Although supermarkets existed in the islands as early as 1928; it was not until after World War II that supermarkets developed on a large scale basis in Hawaii.

Maurice J Sullivan left his native Ireland in 1927 (at the age of 17) for New York with $7 in his pocket. His first job was sacking potatoes at The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) in Pennsylvania. Within a year, he worked his way up to store manager in Buffalo, New York.

During World War II, Sullivan enlisted in the Air Corps and was stationed at Hickam Air Base. Placed in charge of procuring product for the Commissary and Officers’ Mess Hall, “Sully” would travel the island looking for fresh produce.

One such trip brought him to the Lanikai store, run by Chinese immigrants, the Lau family. The Laus had purchased the Lanikai store in 1941. Shoo She Pang “Mama” Lau and her daughter Joanna befriended him. Joanna, a McKinley High School graduate, had left her studies at the University of Hawaii to help her mother run Lanikai Store.

Soon, Sully would visit them on his days off to work at the store. After the war, the Laus asked Sully to help them run their business.

Knowing he would not be satisfied running a small mom-and-pop store and worried that Hawai‘i was too small, he declined and returned to Buffalo, NY. (A few weeks of winter changed his mind, and he returned to the islands.)

He went back to the Laus at the Lanikai store and told them he had two conditions in working with them: first, they would remodel the store, and second, they would promise to one day help him fulfill his dream of opening a supermarket.

They agreed. Sully worked there for two years as store manager.

The Laus were friends with Hiram Fong, who had just purchased some property at the corner of Kapiʻolani Boulevard and Harding Avenue in Honolulu – this became Market City Shopping Center.

Mama Lau persuaded Fong to lease her space for a supermarket. With the hard work of Mama, Sully and Joanna and $20,000 in capital, the store opened on May 6, 1948. At Joanna’s suggestion, the store was called ‘Foodland Super Market.’

The success of the Market City store demonstrated the popularity of the supermarket concept and showed Sully’s commitment to creating great shopping experiences.

From there the Foodland chain grew quickly as School Street, ‘Āina Haina and Beretania Street locations joined the fold within a few years.

The first traffic signal in Kailua was installed at the intersection of Kuʻulei and Kailua Roads in 1954. That year, Foodland opened Windward Oʻahu’s first modern supermarket across from Kailua Beach Park. (Kāneʻohe Ranch)

Not only were Foodland’s fifth and twelfth stores located in Kailua, but Sully Sullivan soon married Mama’s daughter, Joanna Lau, and the two raised their family in Kailua – right next to the Kailua Road store.

The company grew quickly, opening a store a year for the next ten years. It expanded to Kauai in 1967, Maui in 1970 and the Big Island in 1971.

In addition to Foodland, Sully opened Food Pantry (to serve Hawaii’s growing visitor market), Dunkin’ Donuts, Hallmark card stores, Morrow’s Nut House, Swiss Colony and jewelry retailer Coral Grotto. Sullivan was the original Hawaii franchisee for McDonald’s; the first one opened in ‘Āina Haina.

Today, there are 32 Foodland and Sack N Save locations statewide, and more than 2,500 employees. (Sully died February 28, 1998 and Joanna died September 2, 2015.)

Remaining a locally-owned, family-run business, the company is now run by Sully’s daughter, Jenai Sullivan Wall. (Lots of information here is from Foodland, Advertiser and Star-Bulletin.)

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Foodland’s 1st store at Market City-foodland

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Former Foodland-Kailua Beach Shopping Center-docomomo

Aina Haina Foodland

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Foodland-Windward City Shopping Center

April 28, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Pan-Pacific Union

The first gathering from different Pacific countries met in Hawai‘i on August 2-20, 1920 in the First Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference. Later, the First Pan-Pacific Educational Conference was held in Honolulu, August 11-24, 1921. About this time the Bureau of American Republics was being organized into the Pan-American Union at Washington, DC.

“The Pan-Pacific Union, representing the lands about the greatest of oceans, is supported by appropriations from Pacific governments. It works chiefly through the calling of conferences, for the greater advancement of, and cooperation among, all the races and peoples of the Pacific.” (Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, December 1924)

“In the beginning, the union may with justice be acclaimed the handiwork of one man, Alexander Hume Ford. He it was who in 1908 translated an idealistic dream of a brotherhood of Pacific races into an equally idealistic but more substantial organization dedicated to the furtherance of interracial good will and amity.”

“He it was who, after a long battle to gain the support of an at first skeptical Hawaii to the new Pan-Pacific Union visited the capitals of the oriental countries, the Australasian states, Canada and the United States, gaining pledges of support for the new movement from statesmen wherever he went.”

“And again it has been Ford who has fought for legislative appropriations to carry on the work, Ford who has personally fostered and built up a strong spirit of mutual respect and friendship among the diversified nationalities of Hawai‘i”. (Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, July 1922)

‘Pan-Pacific Union’ was the local expression of the larger ‘Hands-around-the-Pacific’ movement, which embraced all countries in and about the vast western ocean – the future theatre of the world’s greatest activities. (The Friend, May 1, 1918)

Ford’s “‘The Mid-Pacific Magazine,’ published at the Cross-Roads of the Pacific, (served as a) Pan-Pacific publication, presenting monthly interesting facts, fictions, poetry and general articles concerning the lands in and bordering on the great ocean.”

The projected calling of a Pan-Pacific conference to meet in Hawaiʻi, the establishment of a Pan-Pacific commercial college in Honolulu and the project of a Pan-Pacific peace exposition here after the war was launched by a number of influential business men. (Mid-Pacific Magazine, 1918)

A Pan-Pacific commercial college was considered one of the best means to bring Hawaiʻi into closer communion with the countries of the Far East while the exposition and general conference would create a sentiment in the countries of the Pacific to make the Pacific independent in its resources and make Hawaiʻi a real cross-road of the Pacific. (Oregon News, June 26, 1918)

In 1924, the Mary Castle Estate allowed the Pan-Pacific Research Institute to use her former home, Puʻuhonua, in Mānoa for University of Hawai‘i student and other use to “tackle the scientific problems of the Pacific peoples, especially those of food production, protection and conservation.”

“The assistant students will, it is expected, attend the University of Hawai‘i, where they will take their degrees. Two such students from the mainland now with scientific party here, are expected to be the first of such entries in the University of Hawaii with others to follow from lands across the Pacific.”

“The gift will be used as the nucleus of the Pan-Pacific University, for which charter was granted some years ago. This will be graduate university chiefly for research work.”

“The chief work of the Pan-Pacific Research Institute will be along lines of research study of food resources of Pacific lands and of the ocean itself. It will be entirely Pan-Pacific Institute connected with no other body but cooperating with kindred bodies in all Pacific lands. It will be neither American, Hawaiian nor Japanese, but governed by scientists from all Pacific regions.”

“Conferences are being held with the heads of several delegations already here from Pacific lands, and cable invitations have been sent to others to hurry on and take part in the deliberations as to the work the institute shall undertake for the peoples of the Pacific area.” (Bulletin of the Pan Pacific Union, September 1924)

In the following 16-years the Pan-Pacific Union became a sort of early “think tank” capable of providing “perfect quiet for study, remote from disturbances, with ample room for visiting scientists to live and work.”

Many other institutions were happy to cooperate. The Bishop Museum lodged research fellows there, often for a year at a time. There was one charge for the lodgers: a visitor was expected to give at least one of the weekly public lectures.

A Junior Science Council was added. In 1933 Ford wrote that “twenty students of all races and from many localities, members of the Pan-Pacific Student’s Club who are attending the University of Hawai‘i, are occupying the barn and carriage house in a cooperative housekeeping arrangement and working out in their own way ideas which may promote happier international relations.” (Robb & Vicars)

The big house was finally torn down in 1941. The other associated structures lay empty, and gradually they disintegrated. Termites had long been a problem.

A combination of lack of attention to administrative detail, inadequate long-term funding arrangements, declining governmental support (compounded by the global economic depression,) and, perhaps above all, a shift in support on the part of Hawai‘i’s socio-economic leaders from the Pan-Pacific Union to the new Institute of Pacific Relations, resulted in the group’s slow decline.

By the advent of WW II, Pan-Pacific Union had withered into insignificance and, with Ford himself in rapidly declining health, it simply disappeared.

This does not mean the Pan-Pacific Union and Ford were at last irrelevant. (UH) As a local newspaper editorialized at the time of Ford’s death in 1946, he “did more than any other man to acquaint the whole wide world with the importance of Hawai‘i in the Pacific theater.” (Honolulu Advertiser, October 18, 1946; UH)

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Pan-Pacific Union-1921

April 24, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

ʻŌhiʻa

There is a disturbance in the forest.

The native Hawaiian ʻōhiʻa (Metrosideros polymorpha) is the most abundant tree in the Hawaiian Islands, comprising about 62 percent of the total forest area.

The name Metrosideros is derived from Greek metra, heartwood, and sideron, iron, in reference to the hard wood of the genus. Known as ‘Ōhi‘a Lehua, the species is found on all major islands and in a variety of habitats. (Friday and Herbert)

‘Ōhi‘a lehua is typically the dominant tree where it grows. Although the species is little used commercially, it is invaluable from the standpoint of watershed protection, esthetics, and as the only or major habitat for several species of forest birds, some of which are currently listed as threatened or endangered.

ʻŌhiʻa is a slow-growing, endemic evergreen species capable of reaching 75- to 90-feet in height and about 3-feet in diameter. It is highly variable in form, however, and on exposed ridges, shallow soils, or poorly drained sites it may grow as a small erect or prostrate shrub.

Its trunk may range in form from straight to twisted and crooked. Because the species can germinate on the trunks of tree ferns and put out numerous roots that reach the ground, it may also have a lower trunk consisting of compact, stilt-like roots.

The hard, dark reddish wood of ʻōhiʻa lehua was used in house and canoe construction and in making images (ki‘i), poi boards, weapons, tool handles, kapa beaters (especially the rounded hohoa beater), and as superior quality firewood.

ʻŌhiʻa lehua, though of a very nice color, cracks or ‘checks’ too easily to be useful for calabash making. The foliage served religious purposes and young leaf buds were used medicinally. The flowers and leaf buds (liko lehua) were used in making lei.

To Hawaiians of old, the gods were everywhere, not only as intangible presences but also in their myriad transformation forms (kinolau) and in sacred images (ki‘i). Most of the large images were carved from wood of the ʻōhiʻa lehua, an endemic species that is regarded as a kinolau of the gods Kane and Kū.

The materials used in large part depended on the resources available nearby and whether a hale was for aliʻi or makaʻāinana, but in either case, hardwoods were selected for the ridgepoles, posts, rafters, and thatching poles. Hardwoods grew abundantly in Hawaiian forests, in terms of both number of species and the count of hardwoods as a whole.

ʻŌhiʻa lehua grew on all the major islands and was widely used in housebuilding. Canoe decking, spreaders, and seats were commonly made of ʻōhiʻa lehua, as well as for the gunwales.

ʻŌhiʻa lehua was one of the five primary plants represented at the hula altar (ʻōhiʻa lehua, halapepe, ‘ie‘ie, maile and palapalai.) The hālau hula, a structure consecrated to the goddess Laka, was reserved for use by dancers and trainees and held a vital place in the life of an ahupua‘a.

Inside a hālau hula was an altar (kuahu), on which lay a block of wood of the endemic lama, a tree whose name translates as “light” or “lamp” and carried the figurative meaning of “enlightenment.” Swathed in yellow kapa and scented with ‘olena, this piece of wood represented Laka, goddess of hula, sister and wife of Lono.

A number of other deities were also represented on the altar by plants: ʻōhiʻa lehua for the god Kukaʻōhiʻa Laka (named for a legendary ʻōhiʻa lehua tree that had a red flower on an eastern branch and a white one on a western branch) …

… halapepe (Pleomele aurea) for the goddess Kapo; ‘ie‘ie for the demigoddess Lauka‘ie‘ie; maile representirig the four Maile sisters, legendary sponsors of hula; and palapalai fern, symbolic of Hi‘iaka, sister of the volcano goddess Pele and the benefactor of all hula dancers.

Native Hawaiians consider the tree and its forests as sacred to Pele, the volcano goddess, and to Laka, the goddess of hula. ʻŌhiʻa lehua blossoms, buds and leaves were important elements in lei of both wili and haku types.

ʻŌhiʻa is the first tree species to establish on most new lava flows. As the entire portion of eastern Hawaii Island is a volcanic area, lava flows occasionally cover areas of forested land. Thus, while some forests are covered with lava, other forested areas serve as ‘seed banks’ and help to bring growth back life to the lava-impacted area.

There is a disturbance in the forest. Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death is posing the greatest threat to Hawai‘i’s native forests. A newly identified disease has killed large numbers of mature ʻōhiʻa trees in forests and residential areas of the Puna, Hilo and Kona Districts of Hawaiʻi Island.

Pathogenicity tests conducted by the USDA Agriculture Research Service have determined that the causal agent of the disease is the vascular wilt fungus; although a different strain, this fungus has been in Hawaiʻi as a pathogen of sweet potato for decades.

It is not yet known whether this widespread occurrence of ʻōhiʻa mortality results from an introduction of an exotic strain of the fungus or whether this constitutes a new host of an existing strain. This disease has the potential to kill ʻōhiʻa trees statewide.

The disease affects non-contiguous forest stands ranging from 1 to 100 acres. As of 2014, approximately 6,000 acres from Kalapana to Hilo on Hawaiʻi Island had been affected with stand showing greater than 50% mortality. The disease has not yet been reported on any of the other Hawaiian Islands.

Crowns of affected trees turn yellowish and subsequently brown within days to weeks; dead leaves typically remain on branches for some time. On occasion, leaves of single branches or limbs of trees turn brown before the rest of the crown of becomes brown.

Recent investigation indicates that the pathogen progresses up the stem of the tree. Trees within a given stand appear to die in a haphazard pattern; the disease does not appear to radiate out from already infected or dead trees. Within two to three years nearly 100% of trees in a stand succumb to the disease.

The fungus manifests itself as dark, nearly black, staining in the sapwood along the outer margin of trunks of affected trees. The stain is often radially distributed through the wood.

Currently, there is no effective treatment to protect ʻōhiʻa trees from becoming infected or cure trees that exhibit symptoms of the disease. To reduce the spread, people should not transport parts of affected ʻōhiʻa trees to other areas. The pathogen may remain viable for over a year in dead wood.

UH scientists are working to protect and preserve this keystone tree in Hawaiʻi’s native forest. The Seed Conservation Laboratory at UH Mānoa’s Lyon Arboretum launched a campaign to collect and bank ʻōhiʻa seeds. They will collect and preserve ʻōhiʻa seeds from all islands for future forest restoration, after the threat of Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death has passed.

I was happy to see the proactive actions taken by the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture; on a recent trip to the Big Island, they handed out notices to travelers on Hawaiian Air, reminding them not to take ‘ōhi‘a off the island. (Lots of information here is from Abbott and CTAHR.)

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Healthy-Impaired Ohia (UH, Lyon)

Rapid Ohia Death confirmed location (UH-CTAHR, April 13, 2016)

Rapid Ohia Death Symptons -rapid browning of tree crowns-CTAHR

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Tiny ohia seeds (1-2 mm) under a microscope-UH

April 17, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Lake Waiau

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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