Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Twain and Maui

Mark Twain wrote books about some of his travels (that included a visit to Hawai‘i) … one such, Roughing It.  Here are some of his comments about Maui.

We “thence sailed to the island of Maui, and spent several weeks there very pleasantly.”

“I still remember, with a sense of indolent luxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge there, called the Iao Valley.  The trail lay along the edge of a brawling stream in the bottom of the gorge–a shady route, for it was well roofed with the verdant domes of forest trees.”

“Through openings in the foliage we glimpsed picturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes and new charms with every step of our progress.”

“Perpendicular walls from one to three thousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously plumed with varied foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns.”

“Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shining fronts, mottling them with blots; billowy masses of white vapor hid the turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background of gleaming green crags and cones that came and went, through the veiling mists, like islands drifting in a fog …”

“… sometimes the cloudy curtain descended till half the canon wall was hidden, then shredded gradually away till only airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it—then swept aloft and left it glorified in the sun again.”

“Now and then, as our position changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin of castellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hung with garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back again and hid themselves once more in the foliage.”

“Presently a verdure-clad needle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner, and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley.”

“It seemed to me that if Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made – therefore, why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump?”

“But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala – which means, translated, ‘the house of the sun.’”

“We climbed a thousand feet up the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then camped, and next day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit, where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night.”

“With the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us.  Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silent wonders.”

“The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surface seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance.  A broad valley below appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantations alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished to mossy tufts.”

“Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely grouped together; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at these things – not down.”

“We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowl ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted away into the sky above us!”

“It was curious; and not only curious, but aggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb ten thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery.”

“However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it; for, all we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds.”

“Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this singular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy.”

“I have spoken of the outside view–but we had an inside one, too.  That was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks, half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering down the almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump …”

“…kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our view as they sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and only betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and coming to a halt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five hundred feet down from where they started!”

“It was magnificent sport.  We wore ourselves out at it.”

“The crater of Vesuvius, … is a modest pit about a thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilauea is somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference.”

“But what are either of them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala?”

“I will not offer any figures of my own, but give official ones–those of Commander Wilkes, U.S.N., who surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty-seven miles in circumference!”

“If it had a level bottom it would make a fine site for a city like London.”

“It must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplating in the old days when its furnaces gave full rein to their anger.”

“Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidly together, a thousand feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean …”

“…-not a vestige of anything was left in view but just a little of the rim of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, and gathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was stored to the brim with a fleecy fog).”

“Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence reigned.  Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor stretched without a break–not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow creases between …”

“… and with here and there stately piles of vapory architecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain–some near at hand, some in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony of the remote solitudes.”

“There was little conversation, for the impressive scene overawed speech.”

“I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world.”

“While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection appeared in the East.  A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste …”

“… flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of rich coloring.”

“It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of it will remain with me always.”

© 2024 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Puʻuhonua O Hōnaunau

“The ancient system consisted in the many tabus, restrictions or prohibitions, by which the high chiefs contrived, to throw about their persons a kind of sacredness, and to instil into the minds of the people a superstitious awe and peculiar dread.”

“If the shadow of a common man fell on a chief, it was death; if he put on a kapa or a malo of a chief, it was death; if he went into the chief’s yard, it was death; if he wore the chief’s consecrated mat, it was death; if he went upon the house of the chief, it was death.”

“If a man stood on those occasions when he should prostrate himself, (such as) when the king’s bathing water… (was) carried along, it was death. If a man walked in the shade of the house of a chief with his head besmeared with clay, or with a wreath around it, or with his head wet… it was death.”

“There were many other offenses of the people which were made capital by the chiefs, who magnified and exalted themselves over their subjects.”  (Dibble)

The social rules for interaction with gods and members of the chiefly class were legion, and death by human sacrifice was the default punishment in many cases.  (Shoenfelder)

Puʻuhonua were locations which, through the power of the gods and the generosity of the chiefs, afforded unconditional absolution to those who broke taboos, disobeyed rulers, or committed other crimes.  (Schoenfelder)

Ethno-historical literature, and available physical, cultural, and locational data, note at least 57-sites across the Islands.  Puʻuhonua tended to occur in areas of high population and/or in areas frequented by chiefs.  (Schoenfelder)

These range from enclosed compounds such as Hōnaunau, to platforms (Halulu on Lānaʻi), to fortified mountain-tops (Kawela on Molokaʻi), to unmodified natural features (Kūkaniloko on Oʻahu) and to entire inhabited land sections, as at Lāhainā on Maui. (Schoenfelder)

Recognized as one of the significant puʻuhonua, and one that is well preserved and presented for the rest of us to understand was Puʻuhonua O Hōnaunau on the Kona coast on the Island of Hawaiʻi.

The Place of Refuge, termed the ‘City of Refuge’ by Rev. William Ellis in 1823, with its adjoining chiefly residences. Beyond the boundaries of the “Palace Grounds”, around the head of Hōnaunau Bay, lived the chiefly retainers and the commoners. South of the Place of Refuge were scattered settlements along the coast and inland under the cliffs of Keanaee.  (NPS)

“The Puhonua at Hōnaunau is a very capacious one, capable of containing a vast multitude of people. In time of war, the females, children, and old people of the neighbouring districts, were generally left within it, while the men went to battle. Here they awaited in safety the issue of the conflict, and were secure against surprise and destruction in the event of a defeat.”  (Ellis, 1823)

“These Puhonuas were the Hawaiian ‘Cities of Refuge,” and afforded an inviolable sanctuary to the guilty fugitive, who, when flying from the avenging spear, was so favoured as to enter their precincts.”  (Ellis, 1823)

“Hither the manslayer, the man who had broken a taboo, or failed in the observance of its rigid requirements, the thief, and even the murderer, fled from his incensed pursuers, and was secure. To whomsoever he belonged, and from whatever part he came, he was equally certain of admittance, though liable to be pursued even to the gates of the enclosure.”  (Ellis, 1823)

“Happily for him, those gates were perpetually open. Whenever war was proclaimed, and during the period of actual hostilities, a white flag was unfurled on the top of a tall spear, on the outside, at each end of the enclosure, and until’ the conclusion of peace, waved the symbal of hope to those, who, vanquished in fight, might flee thither for protection.”

“To the spot, on which this banner was unfurled, the victorious warrior might chase his routed foes. But here he must himself fall back. Beyond it he must not advance one step, on pain of forfeiting his life.”

“The priests and their adherents – would immediately put to death anyone, who should have the temerity to follow, or molest those, who were once within the pale of the pahu tabu, and, and as they expressed it, under the shade, or skreening protection, of the spirit of Keave, the tutelar deity of the place.”  (Ellis, 1823)

A structure there, Hale-O-Keawe was erected around 1650 to serve as a temple mausoleum for the ruling chiefs of Kona. It served as the major temple for the “Place of Refuge” until 1819, when the religious laws (kapu) were abandoned.

“The appearance of the house was good. Its posts and rafters were of kauila wood, and it was said that this kind of timber was found in the upland of Napu’u. It was well built, with crossed stems of dried ti leaves, for that was the kind of thatching used.”

“The appearance inside and outside of the house was good to look at. The compact bundles of bones (pukuʻi iwi) that were deified (hoʻokuaʻia) were in a row there in the house, beginning with Keawe’s near the right side of the door by which one went in and out, and going to the spot opposite the door (kuʻono).”  (John Papa ʻĪʻi)

“It is a compact building, 24 feet by 16, constructed with the most durable timber, and thatched with ti leaves, standing on a bed of lava, which runs out a considerable distance into the sea. It is surrounded by a strong fence, or paling, leaving an area in the front and at each end, about twenty-four feet wide, paved with smooth fragments of lava laid down with considerable skill.”

“Several rudely carved male and female images of wood were placed on the outside of the enclosure; some on low pedestals, under the shade of an adjacent tree; others on high posts, on the jutting rocks that hung over the edge of the water.”  (Ellis, 1823)

“The zeal of Kaʻahumanu led her as early as 1829 to visit the Hale O Keawe at Honaunau, a cemetery associated with dark superstitions, and surrounded with horrid wooden images of former generations. The regent visited the place not to mingle her adorations with her early contemporaries and predecessors to the relics of departed mortals, but for the purpose of removing the bones of twenty-four deified kings and princes of the Hawaiian race….”  (Bingham)

“… when she saw it ought to be done, she determined it should be done: and in company with Mr. Ruggles and Kapiolani, she went to the sacred deposit, and caused the bones to be placed in large coffins and entombed in a cave in the precipice at the head of Kealakekua Bay.”  (Bingham)

The puʻuhonua was deeded to Miriam Kekāuluohi, a granddaughter of Kamehameha I, in the Māhele of 1848, and it was inherited, upon her death, by Levi Haʻalelea, her second husband. In 1866, the property was auctioned by Ha‘alelea’s estate to Charles Kana‘ina, the father of William Charles Lunalilo.

Kana‘ina, however, did not pay the $5,000 bid, and Charles Reed Bishop stepped in to purchase Ha‘alelea’s land for that same amount on April 1, 1867. In 1891, six years after Pauahi’s death, Bishop deeded the land to the trustees of the Bishop Estate who leased it to one of their members, SM Damon.

Damon was responsible for the 1902 restoration work on the Great Wall and the stone platforms of two heiau, Hale O Keawe and ‘Ale‘ale‘a. The County of Hawai‘i took over Damon’s lease in 1921. That lease expired in 1961 when the then County Park was acquired by the US National Park Service.  (deSilva)

Originally established in 1955 as City of Refuge National Historical Park, Puʻuhonua O Hōnaunau National Historical Park was renamed on November 10, 1978.

Further reconstruction consisted of four terraces and a passage between the southern end of the platform and the northern end of the Great Wall. In 1966-67 Edmund J Ladd directed the excavation and re-stabilization of the Hale o Keawe platform. Ladd’s excavations in addition to historical accounts indicated that the platform did not originally have multiple tiers; therefore, the 1967 work restored the platform to its more authentic form that joins the Great Wall on its south side.

After the platform was restored, the thatched hale, wooden palisade, and kiʻi were also rebuilt on the site. Since the time of Ladd’s initial reconstruction, the Hale o Keawe structure and carved wooden kiʻi have been replaced on two occasions with the most recent efforts being completed in 2004.  (NPS)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Waiʻaleʻale

“Aloha Waiʻaleʻale
Ka Kuahiwi o Kauai”

“Such is the beginning of the ancient mele which pilgrims were formerly accustomed to sing on reaching the highest peak of the mountain, which is Waiʻaleʻale proper; at its foot lies the fabulous lake from which it takes its name.  “Rippling Water,” the origin of many a wild tale, lay before us; it proved to be a very small pool.”  (Dole, The Garden Island, October 21, 1913)

“As droplets in a cloud approach the mountain, small vertical wind shear constrains their horizontal motion, while upward motion stops at the trade wind inversion or stable layer. Thus entrainment is limited and droplets grow rapidly.  Over the sea and along the coast, drops falling from the cloud usually evaporate.”

“At the mountain face, lifting cools the air. Increased condensation and turbulence accelerate drop growth through collision, as flow becomes constrained between mountain and the trade wind inversion. At the cloud-covered mountaintop, mechanical uplift stops and most of the accumulated moisture precipitates as prolonged light or moderate continuous rain.”  (Ramage)

“Hawaii now claims the wettest spots on earth.  From records covering a long period, Cherrapunji, a village at the elevation of about 4,800 feet in the Khasi hills of India, has established a rainfall average of 426 inches a year …”

“Short period observations show that Mount Waiʻaleʻale, the central peak of the island of Kauai, with a height of 5,080 feet, has a yearly average of 476 inches.  Other parts of Hawaii are scarcely less damp.  Puʻu Kukui, 5,000 feet high on the island of Maui, has had a seven-year average of 396-inches.  (The Times, Arkansas, July 9, 1920)

“You all know, more or less definitely, that there is a swampy region on the top of Waiʻaleʻale – but perhaps you do not realize that this swamp extends from Waiʻaleʻale clear back to Nāpali district, comprising a great table land of some 30 or 35 square miles, lying at an elevation varying from 4,000 to 5,000 ft. No such table land is found, at this elevation on any other island.”  (The Garden Island, December 14, 1914)

In 1913, The Garden Island published a letter from George H Dole, a resident of Kauai, to Judge Jacob Hardy, describing the “first ascent of the highest mountain on Kauai by white men.” (1862)  The following are excerpts from that letter and article written 100-years ago (in a lot of respects, I suspect it remains much the same.)

“Permit me merely to premise that the mountain of Waiʻaleʻale, although in former times frequently visited by the natives, had never until our visit been trod by the foot of a haole.”

They left from Waimea, riding on horseback “through the cocoanut groves of the valley until we reached Kalaeokaua, where we turned off into the Makaweli valley.”

“Our general course through this valley was about northeast; as we proceeded, the road, – to use an expression from St. Paul, – waxed worse and worse; the sides of the valley became higher and more precipitous, till they reached a degree of rugged sublimity which made them worthy objects of contemplation.”

“The narrow path led us on up it winding course, now across the pure, cool waters of the brook, and now into the deep shade of a Kukui grove, from whose airy branches the brilliantly dyed little songster whistled a merry “God-speed,” or the awkward Aukuʻu (black-crowned night heron) gazed with wonderment in his yellow eyes.”

“The sides of the valley gradually approached each other and increased in height. Ever and anon we paused to take breath, and as we look upon the immense perpendicular walls almost surrounding us where ‘time had notched his centuries in the eternal rock,’ our souls would be filled with astonishment and awe.”

“After a march of an hour or two the trees, which hitherto had appeared only in isolated groves, formed a dense forest, with a wild tangled undergrowth of bushes and vines and heavy grass; the hillsides became less steep than before and green with vegetation.”

“A walk of about five miles brought us to the pretty water-fall of Waikakaa, which is perhaps one hundred and fifty feet in height, – we could only give its arrow-like flakes of white foam a passing glance as they descended with a quiet roar to the dark, deep waters of the round basin beneath, and then hastened up the steep hill, richly robed in a many-tined dress of green.”

“We … lunged into the labyrinths of the primeval forest with which these high table-lands are covered, and from which we only emerged when within a short distance of Waiʻaleʻale’s summit.”

“The trees consist chiefly of Lehua, although the Kauila, ʻŌhia, Koa, and many other varieties are frequently met with. The trees throughout this forest are often covered to the depth of two or three inches with gray moss, and the ground is at frequent intervals heavily carpeted with the same material.”

“The forest became wilder, and the country more broken than ever; not far from the cave we descended into a deep ravine and traveled in the bed of the stream for about a mile, sometimes jumping from one moss-covered stone to another at an imminent risk of slipping heels over head into the chilly water, and sometimes wading with complete abandon through the sparking fluid, where it was not over our knees in depth, to the inevitable deterioration of shoe leather.”

“The smooth sloping sides of Waiʻaleʻale soon greeted our delighted eyes, and in a short time, in crossing the Wainiha stream, we said “au revoir” to the old woods, and found ourselves on an open plain, which had a gentle inclination to the west, and was covered with coarse grass; here and there were clumps of bushes, – principally lehua and ohelo”.

“(S)cattering everywhere were wild flowers, some of them vying in beauty and delicacy with the rarest gems of the garden. In low and swamp spots a small variety of silver sword was growing in such profusion that the ground seemed almost covered with a mantle of snow. This whole vicinity would be, as was remarked by one of the company, an interesting field for the explorations of a botanist.”

Waialeale lake “is of a regular, elliptical shape, its two diameters being respectively forty-seven and forty-two feet;–in short, it appears much like an ordinary fish-pond. The chief outlet is the Wainiha stream at the north-west end; the ground is so extremely level along the course of this stream that it flows for a long distance without any perceptible current, and the water would apparently flow just as well the other way.”

“There is another outlet at the south-east end of the pond; it consist of a ditch, said to have been dug by the natives in some former generation, and conducts the water east to the edge of the tremendous pali, from which the pond is distant but a few rods. This little stream trickle down among the fern and grass is the Wailua River in embryo.”

“Thus this crystal lake in miniature is the source of two large streams which empty themselves into the ocean on opposite sides of the island.”

“If we looked off from the brink of the eastern precipice, whose perpendicular height is several thousand feet, nothing was to be seen but an ocean of cloud, so illuminated by the sun as to appear like a boundless field of the whitest snow beneath our feet. It was a very fine spectacle”.

“The whole of Puna was spread out like a map before us, and an exquisitely beautiful landscape it was. As perfect a combination of dark forests, and shimmering streams, and smooth plains, and verdant hills, and blue ocean, is rarely seen; everything was in harmony, – there was nothing to offend the taste.”

“But although the eastern view was invisible, the western was still unclouded and magnificent; the whole of the western portion of the island lay spread out in quiet grandeur, rugged and for the most part densely wooded. At the northeast was the Wainiha valley, with its blue precipitous sides, forming a yawning gulf so deep that no bottom could be seen from our point of observation.”

“Many miles away in the west the mighty pali of Puʻukapele and Halemanu was strikingly apparent, stretching like a stern impassable barrier across the island, from sea to sea.”

“About four o’clock we struck our tent and set out for the lower regions … We arrived at Waimea a little after noon the next day, feeling richly repaid for the toil of the journey, but satisfied that much remained yet unseen, and determining that we would try it again next season.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

ʻOheʻo

Although the canoe was a principal means of travel in ancient Hawaiʻi, extensive cross-country trail networks enabled gathering, harvesting other necessities for survival.

Famed for his energy and intelligence, King Piʻilani and his son Kiha constructed the legendary Alaloa or long trail known as the King’s Highway.

It was built about the time Christopher Columbus was crossing the Atlantic, before there were roads in Hawaiʻi.  Back then, they were trails and Piʻilani was ruler of Maui.

According to oral tradition, Piʻilani unified the entire island of Maui, bringing together under one rule the formerly-competing eastern (Hāna) and western (Wailuku) multi-district kingdoms of the Island.   Piʻilani ruled in peace and prosperity.

Four to six feet wide and 138-miles long, this rock-paved path facilitated both peace and war.  It simplified local and regional travel and communication, and allowed the chief’s messengers to quickly get from one part of the island to another.  The trail was used for the annual harvest festival of Makahiki and to collect taxes, promote production, enforce order and move armies.

The southeastern section of the island of Maui, comprising the districts of Hāna, Kīpahulu, Kaupo and Kahikinui, was at one time a Royal Center and central point of kingly and priestly power – Piʻilani ruled from here (he built Hale O Piʻilani – near Hāna.)  This section of the island was also prominent in the later reign of Kekaulike.

Royal Centers were where the aliʻi resided; aliʻi often moved between several residences throughout the year. The Royal Centers were selected for their abundance of resources and recreation opportunities, with good surfing and canoe-landing sites being favored.

Long before the first Europeans arrived on Maui, Kīpahulu was prized by the Hawaiian aliʻi for its fertile land and abundant ocean.  The first written description of the region was made by La Pérouse in 1786 while sailing along the southeast coast of Maui in search of a place to drop anchor:

“I coasted along its shore at a distance of a league (three miles) …. The aspect of the island of Mowee was delightful.  We beheld water falling in cascades from the mountains,  and running in streams to the sea,  after having watered the habitations of the natives,  which  are  so numerous  that a  space of  three or four leagues (9 – 12 miles, about the distance from Hāna to Kaupō) may be  taken for  a single village.” (La Pérouse, 1786; Bushnell)

“But all the huts are on the seacoast, and the mountains are so near, that the habitable part of the island appeared to be less than half a league in depth.  The trees which crowned the mountains, and the verdure of the banana plants that surrounded the habitations, produced inexpressible charms to our senses…”

“… but the sea beat upon the coast with the utmost violence, and kept us in the situation of Tantalus, desiring and devouring with our eyes what it was impossible for us to attain … After passing Kaupō no more waterfalls are seen, and villages are fewer.” (La Pérouse, 1786; Bushnell)

With the development of the whaling industry on the island in 1880s the southeastern Maui population started to decline as people moved to main whaling ports, such as Lāhainā.  In the early-1900s, one of the regular ports of call for the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company was here at Kīpahulu. Steamships provided passenger service around Maui and between the islands.

Kīpahulu Landing also provided a way for growers and ranchers to ship their goods to markets. (Today the land where Kīpahulu Landing existed is private but protected with a conservation easement, overseen by the Maui Coastal Land Trust (now part of the Hawaiian Islands Land Trust.))

The Hāna Sugar Plantation, formed in 1864, gradually increased production by expanding cane plantings toward Kīpahulu Valley.  (Cusick)

However, shortly after World War II, Paul I Fagan, an entrepreneur from San Francisco, bought the Hāna Sugar Co, formed a ranch and started tourism on this part of Maui.

It had been only 20-years since Hāna was linked to the outside world by a rough dirt road, and it would be almost two decades more before it was paved.

In 1946, Fagan built a small six-room inn, called Kaʻuiki Inn (it was later expanded). Fagan’s guests consisted of his friends as well as sportswriters, one of which gave Hana the current name of “Heavenly Hana.”  (Maui College)

Near here was ʻOheʻo; here was a succession of several waterfalls tumbling from one pool into another and so on up the gulch.  (One interpretation of the name Oheo is “moving origin” – suggesting all pools as one (Yardley.))

In order to entertain guests and promote tourism in East Maui, employees at Fagan’s Inn crafted a legend that these pools had been reserved exclusively for Hawaiian Royalty and, therefore, were considered a sacred site.  (Cusick)

Billed as Hawaiʻi’s “Seven Sacred Pools” to attract tourists, ʻOheʻo Gulch actually has a series of 24 bowls that carry water down the slopes of 10,023-foot Mount Haleakalā to the sea.  (NY Times)

Then in the 1960s, Kīpahulu residents Charles Lindbergh and Sam Pryor, and philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller, concerned that public use of this area may be lost, worked to protect it.  Through their efforts, Kīpahulu Valley and ʻOheʻo Gulch became the Kīpahulu District of Haleakala National Park on January 10, 1969.  (NPS)

This part of the Park is located about 15-minutes past Hāna town, near mile marker 42 on the Hāna Highway (Road to Hana) after it turns into Highway 31. 

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Great Crack

The Great Crack is one of the most conspicuous features of the Southwest Rift Zone of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano. (Halliday) It is an extensive network of cracks, fissures and cones. It spans 8 miles in length, measures 50 feet in width and plunges down to a depth of 66 feet.

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory geologists believe that the crack formed as magma intruded into the rift zone causing the surface to spread, not from the island falling apart. While the exact time of its formation remains uncertain, research indicates that it might have occurred gradually over time. (NPS)

In 1823, an eruption caused lava to surge out from the lower section of the Great Crack and flow for about 6 miles into the ocean, destroying one small coastal village at Mahuka Bay.

English missionary William Ellis witnessed the aftermath of the eruption. “Messrs (William) Ellis, (Asa) Thurston, (Artemas) Bishop and (Joseph) Goodrich made a tour round the island of Hawai‘i, examining its various districts, conversing with the natives, and preaching the gospel 130 different times.”  (History of ABCFM) They were looking for suitable sites for mission stations.

Of this, Ellis wrote, “The people of Kearakomo also told us, that, no longer than five moons ago, Pele had issued from a subterranean cavern, and overflowed the low land of Kearaara, and the southern part of Kapapala.”

“The inundation was sudden and violent, burnt one canoe, and carried four more into the sea. At Mahuka, the deep torrent of lava bore into the sea a large rock, according to their account, near a hundred feet high, which, a short period before, had been separated by an earth quake from the main pile in the neighbourhood ….”

“We exceedingly regretted our ignorance of this inundation at the time we passed through the inland parts of the above-mentioned districts, for, had we known of it then, we should certainly have descended to the shore, and examined its extent and appearance.”

“We now felt convinced that the chasms we had visited at Ponahohoa, and the smoking fissures we afterwards saw nearer Kirauea, marked the course of a stream of lava, and thought it probable, that though the lava had burst out five months ago, it was still flowing in a smaller and less rapid stream.” (Ellis)

A hundred years later, geologist Harold Stearns officially named it the ‘Keaiwa Flow,’ which was a name the residents of Ka‘ū had been using informally back then. (NPS)

“The Keaiwa flow of 1823 from Kilauea welled up in the Great Crack and spread out seaward as a thin flow, in places only a few inches thick. The absence of cinders or driblet cones in or along the crack indicates that the usual fire fountains of Hawaii did not play during this eruption.”

“Lining the Great Crack in many places are lava balls that appear to be bombs, but that do not owe their form to projection.” (Stearns)

Beginning at roughly 2,300 feet in elevation, the lower extent of the Southwest Rift Zone is quite unlike any other on the island. Faulting activity here has consolidated into a feature named The Great Crack. It is just that, a single large crack that runs unbroken for more than 10 miles before finally reaching the coastline. (Coons)

“The Great Crack is one of a number of open cracks that fissure the southwest rift zone, a belt 1-2 miles wide extending southwestward from Kilauea to the sea.”

“Throughout most of its length the Great Crack has the general appearance of a steep-sided trench 20 to 30 feet wide. A few yards north of the head of the Keaiwa flow the crack breaks up into many smaller ones.”

“There are also graben areas [an elongated block of the earth’s crust lying between two faults and displaced downward] which seem to have been produced by the separation of the fissure into two cracks for a short distance and the later collapse of the narrow slices thus formed, with the subsidence of the magma.”

“In other places the graben is due to the collapse along the walls bordering the fissure when the region settled down after the extrusion of the lava.  In a few places, especially near the sea, the Great Crack decreases in width to about 2 feet, and it finally dies out in echelon fashion at the coast. The cracks beyond the area of extravasation are only a few inches wide.”

“The Great Crack … differs from the others only in its continuity; it can be traced continuously for about 8 miles, and before it was buried by the flow of 1920 it must have been traceable still farther toward Halemaumau.”

“However, the mere fact that the Great Crack is continuous does not necessarily indicate that it was all opened at one time. There is ample evidence to show that it belongs to a system of fissures from which lava has poured out again and again.” (Stearns)

The Great Crack “is the result of crustal dilation from magmatic intrusions into the rift zone and not from the seaward movement of the south flank. There is no evidence that the Great Crack is getting bigger at this time or that the island is tearing apart along this seam.”

“Where the crack is narrow enough that opposing walls can be compared, matching features fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This suggests that a simple widening caused the crack. Opposite walls also have no vertical offset, so south flank subsidence did not influence the formation of the crack.”

“The total breakaway of the south flank block of Kīlauea … is not taking place at this time.” (USGS)

Notable features in the Great Crack are caves.  Most of the floor of the open crack is littered with breakdown, but there are occasional gaps where cave entrances and pit craters lead to greater depths within the Great Crack System. It is believed there are more than 20 of these.

“The National Park Service has acquired a nearly 2,000-acre Big Island property containing a chasm known as ‘The Great Crack.’ The oceanfront property adjacent to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was purchased for $1.95 million in a recent foreclosure sale”.

“The park has been interested in the property northeast of Pahala for more than five decades, said Ben Hayes, the park’s director of interpretation.” (Associated Press, 2018)

The National Park is working to create a long-term plan for managing the Great Crack area. The park is exploring future public use options for these areas, with a community meeting in Fall 2023 to learn from local residents about the site’s resources and past uses. (NPS)

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