Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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Pearl Harbor Historic Trail

Pearl Harbor Historic Trail is a partially-existing heritage and recreational corridor that has the goal of establishing an 18+ mile multi-use recreational trail that will highlight historic sites from the USS Arizona Memorial to the west coast Oʻahu community of Nānākuli.
The full Pearl Harbor Historic Trail is still only an idea, but there is already a multi-use trail from the Arizona Memorial parking lot to Waipi’o Point Access Road.  The path is intended to be improved as part of the historic trail project.
The long-range Master Plan (prepared in 2001) stemmed from the Aiea-Pearl City Community Vision Group’s Year 2000 project.
The Pearl Harbor Historic Trail is a vital element in the Aiea-Pearl City Livable Communities Plan as its proposed projects for the area are integrated into the Plan.
The former Oahu Railway and Land Company (OR&L) right-of-way is the foundation upon which the proposed Pearl Harbor Historic Trail will be built.
A key project of the Master Plan is the re-establishment of the historic railway operation for the entire 18+ miles of the Trail.
The Hawaiian Railway Society (HRS) currently operates a six-mile long narrated railway train tour between its Ewa station museum and Kahe Tracks Beach Park in Nanakuli.
The Community Vision Group saw the 40-foot wide OR&L right-of-way as a valuable asset within their community that had the potential to meet a number of community needs such as safe bicycle and pedestrian paths, a natural and historic preservation project, a recreation resource, a means of opening up shoreline access, and an opportunity for economic revitalization.
The Master Plan incorporates a combination shared-use path and railway that includes major components, attractions and activity centers that will establish the Trail as a world-class heritage and recreation corridor.
The Trail will feature a continuous path for bicyclists and pedestrians alongside an historic train, diverging from the OR&L right-of-way where advantageous to take in shoreline views.
Miles of greenway and bikeway connections and gateways to the path are proposed, enhancing access to nearby communities and attractions. 
A few years ago, Nelia and I biked from Aiea Bay State Recreation Area, first to the Arizona Memorial side, then to Waipiʻo Peninsula along the existing portion of the trail.
At that time, it was in generally good condition; it is used daily by bikers, joggers and walkers.  There are great views of Pearl Harbor, as well as other odds and ends along the way.
The image shows the general route of the bike path; I have also included some photos of the bike trip we took a few years ago on the trail in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook page.

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Ahupuaʻa – Hawaiian Land Management System

In ancient Hawai‘i, most of the common people were farmers, a few were fishermen.  Tenants cultivated smaller crops for family consumption, to supply the needs of chiefs and provide tributes.
Kapu (restrictions/prohibitions) were observed as a matter of resource and land management, among other things.
Access to resources was tied to residency and earned as a result of taking responsibility to steward the environment and supply the needs of aliʻi.
The social structure reinforced land management.
Dwellings were thatched structures designed primarily for protection against inclement weather.  Floors of the houses were raised platforms of lava rock, with small pebble layers.  Pili grass was strewn about and all of this was covered with woven lauhala mats.  Most activities (i.e. cooking and eating) took place outdoors.
The traditional land use in the Hawaiian Islands evolved from shifting cultivation into a stable form of agriculture.  Stabilization required a new form of land use and eventually the ahupua‘a form of land management was instituted.
For hundreds of years since, on the death of all mō‘ī (kings or queens), the new ruler re-divided the land, giving control of it to his or her favorite chiefs.
Each ahupuaʻa in turn was ruled by a lower chief, or aliʻi ʻai.  He, in turn, appointed an overseer, or konohiki.  (The common people never owned or ruled land.)
The konohiki served as general manager responsible for the use of an ahupuaʻa as a resource system.  He, in turn, was assisted by specialists, or luna.  For example, the luna wai was responsible for the fresh water flow and irrigation system.
Ahupuaʻa served as a means of managing people and taking care of the people who support them, as well as an easy form of collection of tributes by the chiefs.  Ultimately, this helped in preserving resources.
Shaped by island geography, ahupuaʻa varied in shape and size (from as little as 100-acres to more than 100,000-acres.)
A typical ahupuaʻa (what we generally refer to as watersheds, today) was a long strip of land, narrow at its mountain summit top and becoming wider as it ran down a valley into the sea to the outer edge of the reef.  If there was no reef then the sea boundary would be about one and a half miles from the shore.  
Each ahupuaʻa had its own name and boundary lines.  Often the markers were natural features such as a large rock or a line of trees or even the home of a certain bird.  A valley ahupuaʻa usually used its ridges and peaks as boundaries. 
Additional markers were placed to note the ahupua‘a boundary – so called because the boundary was marked by a heap (ahu) of stones surmounted by an image of a pig (pua‘a,) or because a pig or other tribute was laid on the altar as tax to the chief.
People living in one ahupuaʻa were free to use whatever grew wild in that ahupuaʻa.  But a resident of one ahupuaʻa could not take anything from another ahupuaʻa. Boundaries were important and people carefully learned their locations.
In ancient Hawaiian times, relatives and friends exchanged products.  The upland dwellers brought poi, taro and other foods to the shore to give to kinsmen there.  The shore dweller gave fish and other seafood.  Visits were never made empty-handed but always with something from one’s home to give.
Ahupuaʻa contained nearly all the resources Hawaiians required for survival.  Fresh water resources were managed carefully for drinking, bathing and irrigation.
Wild and cultivated plants provided food, clothing, household goods, canoes, weapons and countless other useful products.  Many land and sea creatures utilized for food also provided bones, teeth, skin and feathers for tools, crafts and ornamentation.
Trees for canoes, house building, idols, etc came from the forest zone.  Below the forest, in the Upland area, bamboo, ti and pili grass for thatching houses and were collected.
Within the coastal area and valleys, taro was cultivated in lo‘i; sweet potato, coconut, sugar cane and other food sources thrived in these areas.  The shore and reefs provided fish, shellfish and seaweed.
(Image: Ahupua‘a model after Luciano Minerbi 1999, slightly modified.  (Mueller-Dombois))  In addition, I have placed older USGS maps (each noting ahupua‘a on respective islands) on my Linked In page (you may have to sign in to LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/pub/peter-t-young/25/868/649 – go to the bottom of the Profile for the folders to see/download respective maps.)
In preparing the Corridor Management Plan for the Scenic Byway on Aliʻi Drive, we recommended that ahupua‘a markers be placed along the corridor to note the historic land divisions.  We are recommending the same at Kōloa, Kaua‘i for the Plan we are working on there.
In addition, I posted some recent attempts of modern representations of ancient ahupua‘a boundary markers in parts of the State (primarily Ko‘olaupoko on O‘ahu and Keauhou on Hawai‘i Island.)  These are in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook page.

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Kohala Field System

Throughout the younger islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, dryland agricultural field systems constituted a significant component of the late prehistoric subsistence economy.
The field systems produced large quantities of food to support local farmers and residents, as well as local and district-level chiefly elites.
It is generally thought that the dryland agricultural systems had spread to their maximum extent, nearly reaching the edge of productive lands.
Kohala supported a large and well-developed field system, covering over 15,000-acres with a dense network of field walls and paved trails.  It is one of the largest archaeological sites in Polynesia.
In the Kohala area, Hawaiian farmers found, farmed and intensified production on lands that were poised between being too wet and too dry.
The distribution of intensive rain-fed agricultural systems was constrained on its lower end by conditions that were too arid to support intensive agriculture reliably, while at their upper margin many millennia of leaching had depleted soil fertility to a point where intensive rain-fed agriculture was infeasible.
In essence, Hawaiians were farming the rock in intensive dryland agricultural systems; their field systems extended to the wettest point that still supplied nutrients via basalt weathering.
When the field system is plotted against the rainfall map it falls within the 30-70-in rainfall band.
Archaeological evidence of intensive cultivation of sweet potato and other dryland crops is extensive, including walls, terraces, mounds and other features.
The fields throughout the Kohala system were oriented parallel to the elevation contours and the walls (and perhaps kō (sugar cane) planted on them) would have functioned as windbreaks from the trade winds which sweep down the slopes of the Kohala mountains.
Configured in this way, the walls would also have reduced evapotranspiration and – with heavy mulching – retained essential moisture for the crops.  This alignment of fields also conserved water by retaining and dispersing surface run-off and inhibited wind erosion and soil creep.
The main development of the Kohala field system took place AD 1450-1800.  By the late-1600s the lateral expansion of the field system had been reached, and by AD 1800 the system was highly intensified.
The process of intensification involved shortened fallow periods, and agricultural plots divided into successively smaller units.
The archaeological map of the Kohala field system depicts over 5,400-segments of rock alignments and walls with a total length of nearly 500-miles.
The fields begin near the north tip of the island very close to the coast.  The western margin extends southward at an increasing distance from the coast, with the eastern margin at a higher elevation and also an increasing distance from the coast.
From north to south the field system is more than 12-miles in length.  At its maximum, it is more than 2.5-miles in width.
Scientists speculate that this farming did not just support the local population, but was also used by Kamehameha to feed the thousands of warriors under his command in his conquest of uniting the islands under a single rule in the late-1700s.
Based on experimental plantings, if only half of the Kohala Field System was in production in one year, it could be producing between 20,000 to 120,000-tons of sweet potato in one crop.
The system was abandoned shortly after European contact in the early- or mid-19th century.
The image shows remnants of the Kohala Field System walls in present pastureland.  A special thanks to Peter Vitousek, former Hawai‘i resident and now Professor at Stanford, for background information and images.  In addition, more images/maps of the Kohala Field System are in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook page.