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March 1, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ala Wai Canal

A son of Mā’ilikūkahi (who ruled about the time Columbus crossed the Atlantic) was Kalona-nui, who in turn had a son called Kalamakua. Kalamakua is said to have been responsible for developing large taro fields in what was once a vast area of wet-taro cultivation on Oʻahu: the Waikiki-Kapahulu-Mōʻiliʻili-Mānoa area.

The early Hawaiian settlers gradually transformed the marsh above Waikīkī Beach into hundreds of taro fields, fish ponds and gardens.  For centuries, springs, taro lo‘i, rice paddies, fruit and vegetable patches, duck ponds and fishing areas were a valuable means of subsistence for native Hawaiians and others.

Formerly the home of Hawaiian royalty, including King Kamehameha, Waikīkī, meaning “spouting waters,” once covered a much broader area than it does today.

The ahupuaʻa, or ancient land division, of Waikīkī actually covered the area extending from Kou (the old name for Honolulu) to Maunalua (now referred to as Hawai’i Kai).

Waikīkī’s marshland, the boundaries of which changed seasonally, once covered about 2,000-acres (about four times the size of Waikīkī today) before the marshes were drained.

During the first decade of the 20th-century, the US War Department acquired more than 70-acres in the Kālia portion of Waikīkī for the establishment of a military reservation called Fort DeRussy.

They drained and filled the area, so they could build on it.  Thus, the Army began the transformation of Waikīkī from wetlands to solid ground.

In the early-1900s, Lucius Pinkham, then President of the Territorial Board of Health and later Governor, developed the idea of constructing a drainage canal to drain the wetlands, which he considered “unsanitary.”  This called for the construction of a canal to reclaim the marshland.

The Waikīkī Reclamation District was identified as the approximate 800-acres from King and McCully Streets to Kapahulu Street, near Campbell Avenue down to Kapiʻolani Park and Kalākaua Avenue on the makai side (1921-1928.)

The dredge material not only filled in the makai Waikīkī wetlands, it was also used to fill in the McKinley High School site.

During the 1920s, the Waikīkī landscape would be transformed when the construction of the Ala Wai Drainage Canal, begun in 1921 and completed in 1928, resulted in the draining and filling in of the remaining ponds and irrigated fields of Waikīkī.

The initial planning called for the extension of the Ala Wai Canal past its present terminus and excavate along Makee Island in Kapiʻolani Park, connecting the Canal with the ocean on the Lēʻahi side of the project.

However, funds ran short and this extension was contemplated “at some later date, when funds are made available”; however, that never occurred.

By 1924, the dredging of the Ala Wai Canal and filling of the wetlands stopped the flows of the Pi‘inaio, ‘Āpuakēhau and Kuekaunahi streams running from the Makiki, Mānoa, and Pālolo valleys to and through Waikīkī.

Walter F. Dillingham’s Hawaiian Dredging Company dredged the canal and sold the material he had dredged to create the canal to build up the newly created land.  The canal is still routinely dredged.

During the course of the Ala Wai Canal’s initial construction, the banana patches and ponds between the canal and the mauka side of Kalākaua Avenue were filled and the present grid of streets was laid out.  These newly created land tracts spurred a rush to development.

With construction of the Ala Wai Canal, 625-acres of wetland were drained and filled and runoff was diverted away from Waikīkī beach.  The completion of the Ala Wai Canal not only gave impetus to the development of Waikīkī as Hawai‘i’s primary visitor destination, but also expanded the district’s potential for residential use.

During the period 1913-1927, the demand for housing in Honolulu grew along with the city’s population.  Waikīkī helped satisfy this demand; the large kamaʻāina landholdings virtually disappeared and the area started to be subdivided.

Before reclamation, assessed values for property were at about $500-per acre and the same property was reclaimed at ten cents per square foot, making a total cost of $4,350-per acre.  The selling price after reclamation, $6,500 to $7,000-per acre, showed the financial benefit of the reclamation efforts.

From an economic point of view, without the Ala Wai Canal, Waikīkī may never have developed into the worldwide tourist attraction it is today.

In 1925, the City Planning Commission requested the citizens of Honolulu to submit suitable Hawaiian names for the renaming of the Waikīkī Drainage canal; twelve names were suggested.

The Commission felt that Ala Wai (waterway,) the name suggested by Jennie Wilson was the “most euphonic”.  (An engineer with the Planning Commission was quick to note that, “the fact that Mrs. Wilson is the mayor’s wife had nothing to do with the choice of the name.”)

In November 1965, a storm, classified as a 25-year event, overflowed the Ala Wai Canal banks and flooded Ala Wai Boulevard.

Ala Wai Canal and the historic walls lining the canal are owned by the State of Hawaiʻi. The promenades on the mauka side of the Ala Wai Canal are owned by the State, and by, Executive Ordered to the City and County of Honolulu, the promenades on the makai side are owned by the City.

The promenades on both sides of the Ala Wai Canal are maintained by the City Department of Parks and Recreation.  The Ala Wai Canal is listed in the National and State registers of historic places.

© 2023 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: General, Place Names, Economy Tagged With: Dillingham, Hawaiian Dredging, Fort DeRussy, Ala Wai, Hawaii, Makiki, Waikiki, Kalamakua, Oahu, Pinkham, Mailikukahi, Ala Wai Canal, Johnny Wilson, Palolo, Manoa

March 3, 2022 by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Surfer Girl

“Surf-riding was one of the most exciting and noble sports known to the Hawaiians, practiced equally by king, chief and commoner. It is still to some extent engaged in, though not as formerly, when it was not uncommon for a whole community, including both sexes, and all ages, to sport and frolic in the ocean the livelong day.” (Malo)

By 1779, riding waves lying down or standing on long, hardwood surfboards was an integral part of Hawaiian culture. Surfboard riding was as layered into the society, religion and myth of the islands as baseball is to the modern United States.

Even the missionaries surfed.

Amos Cooke, who arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1837 – and was later appointed by King Kamehameha III to teach the young royalty in the Chief’s Childrens’ School – surfed himself (with his sons) and enjoyed going to the beach in the afternoon. “After dinner Auhea went with me, & the boys to bathe in the sea, & I tried riding on the surf. To day I have felt quite lame from it.” (Cooke)

Mark Twain sailed to the Hawaiian Islands and tried surfing, describing his 1866 experience in his book Roughing It. “I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself.”

“The board struck the shore in three quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me.”

Missionary Hiram Bingham, noted of surfing (rather poetically,) “On a calm and bright summer’s day, the wide ocean and foaming surf … the green tufts of elegant fronds on the tall cocoanut trunks, nodding and waving, like graceful plumes, in the refreshing breeze …”

“… the natives … riding more rapidly and proudly on their surf-boards, on the front of foaming surges … give life and interest to the scenery.”

Although everyone, including women and children, surfed, it was the chiefs who dominated the sport. One of the best among Waikīkī’s chiefs was Kalamakua; he came from a long ancestry of champion surfers whose knowledge, skill and mana were handed down and passed on from generation to generation. (DLNR)

A notable wahine (woman) surfer was Kelea, sister of Kawao, King of Maui (about AD 1445) – “No sport was to her so enticing as a battle with the waves.” (Kalākaua)

She loved the water possibly because she could see her fair face mirrored in it – and became the most graceful and daring surf-swimmer in the kingdom. Kelea later married Kalamakua. (Kalākaua) But this story is not about Kelea.

This story is about another surfer girl.

Reportedly, Mrs James Cromwell became the first woman to take up competition surfing under the guidance of surfing champion and Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku and his brothers.

Cromwell won “First Place” in a surfboard regatta staged at Waikīkī Beach (January 22, 1939.) She and beach boy Sam Kahanamoku won the tandem, open “malihini girls and beach boys” quarter-mile sprint. (Honolulu Advertiser, January 23, 1939)

She and Sam were a familiar team in Waikīkī, where they won tandem surfing and paddling competitions. A bronze medalist in the 100-meter free-style swim at the 1924 Olympics, Sam was also an avid surfer, paddler, musician and a great wit. (Their friendship continued until his death in 1966.)

By 1941, Cromwell had 13-boards in the household inventory. Each of the boards had a name or initials, including one named Lahilahi (thin or dainty,) an affectionate nickname given to her by the Kahanamokus.

All was not fun and games. Showing her husband her surfing skill while in Honolulu, Mrs Cromwell, in 1935, had a slight scalp wound as a result of being thrown from her 60-pound surfboard. An emergency hospital record showed she was treated and released. (St Petersburg Times, November 3, 1935)

She later had a more modern board, created by Dale Velzy, who is considered one of the men responsible for the rise of the California surfer culture in the years following World War II. Some suggest Velzy opened the first conventional surf shop at Manhattan Beach in California in 1949.

Her board is one of the first boards Velzy created using the new polyurethane foam material; boards were previously made of balsa wood.

Oh, by the way … Mrs Cromwell was more generally known as “the richest girl in the world,” Doris Duke.

Doris Duke, the only child of James Buchanan Duke, was born on November 22, 1912. Her father was a founder of the American Tobacco Company and the Duke Power Company, as well as a benefactor of Duke University. When Mr Duke died in 1925, he left his 12-year old daughter an estate estimated at $80-million.

In the late-1930s, Doris Duke built her Honolulu home, Shangri La, on 5-acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Diamond Head. Shangri La incorporates architectural features from the Islamic world and houses Duke’s extensive collection of Islamic art, which she assembled for nearly 60-years.

Her surfing legacy lives on.

Rough Point has been the ‘home’ of the Doris Duke Surf Fest. It’s not really a surf contest; it’s more of a display of vintage surfboards on the grounds of Rough Point, one of Duke’s other homes (in Newport, Rhode Island, not far from the International Tennis Hall of Fame.)

Designed in the English manorial style, Rough Point was originally built for Frederick W Vanderbilt, sixth son of William H Vanderbilt. When it was commissioned in 1887, Rough Point was the largest house that the Newport summer colony had yet seen, replacing two wood-frame houses at the extreme southeast end of Bellevue Avenue.

Duke’s father bought it in 1922. On her death, she bequeathed the estate to the Newport Restoration Foundation with the directive that it be opened to the public as a museum (it opened for tours in 2000.) (Lots of information here from Shangri La Hawaiʻi and Newport Restoration Foundation.)

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC
 

Filed Under: Place Names, Prominent People Tagged With: Kalamakua, Hawaii, Oahu, Surfing, Shangri La, Doris Duke, Rough Point, James Cromwell, Kelea

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People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

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