Historical
Kona Heritage Corridor
When the Kona Coast
becomes too hot and humid upon a torrid afternoon, or post-littoral
torpor sets in from sunbathing overindulgence at the beach, visitor's
to the Big Island Kona side should take a cue from locals and head
up-country for the fresh, cool afternoon air. The Old Road, a 12 mile
long remnant of the Mamalahoa Highway, runs through a beautiful slice
of Old Hawai’i; coffee farms, fruit orchards, historical buildings,
small towns and an old sugar mill grace the sunny slopes of Hualalai
Volcano here. Mauka, or Up-Country, Kona as this area is called, was
once the beating financial heart of Hawai’i Island—along this
road were built the first newspaper press, bottling company and
telephone exchange on Hawai’i. Today, the road runs through the
artist enclave of Holualoa, famed for its art galleries and
coffeehouses. Sweeping views of the Kona coastline, the upper slopes
of Hualalai Volcano and even Maui on vog-free days, make this road a
trip a not to be missed treat. Let's take a quick tour of the
section of the Kona Heritage Corridor that runs along Highway 180
from it's intersection with Highway 190 north through Holualoa, past
the intersection with Highway 19 and into the town of Kainaliu.
M.
Onizuka Store
Starting at the
intersection of the Mamalahoa Highway (Hwy 180) and Highway 190
(Palani Road) and heading approximately South on the Mamalahoa
Highway, one passes through tropical to temperate rainforest and
comes to the verge of the cloud forest that soften the upper slopes
of Hualalai Volcano. At about the 7 mile maker one passes the old M.
Onizuka Store, the boyhood home of Astronaut Elisson Onizuka, who
died in the Challenger space shuttle disaster.
The M. Onizuka Store was
founded in 1933 by Masamitsu Onizuka in 1933 who provided the
residents of his community with general merchandise and means of
transporting their purchases through the store’s one-man taxi
service. Following her husband’s death, Mitsue Nagata Onizuka
continued to run the store until the day she died in 1990.
“May Peace On Earth
Prevail” proclaims the post outside the residence where Elisson
Onizuka, who had the honor of being the first astronaut of
Japanese-American descent, grew up. History buffs are invited to
explore Hawai’i’s rich involvement in man’s exploration of
space at the Onizuka Space Museum at Kona International Airport.
K. Komo
Store
Boasting but a few
necessary concessions to the march of time, the charming comfort of
the family store of yesteryear lives on in the form of the K. Komo
Store. Gasoline, sundries and good conversation are always available
at this for real slice of “Old Hawai’i”. Serving the people
of Keopu since the early 1900’s, and operated by the third
generation of Komo family, K. Komo Store still grows, roasts, brews
and sells their own brand of coffee. The store is registered on the
National Register of Historic Places.
Holualoa
Town
With a name that means
“the long sled track”, its position at the apex of Kona coffee
country and its modern day eclectic profusion of art galleries,
schools and studios, it’s easy to see that Holualoa, once the
bustling center of North Kona commerce, has been through some changes
in the past 200 years.
Initially, Hawai’ians
grew taro and sweet potato in small family farm plots called
“kuleana” around Holualoa. It is interesting to note that today
the word “kuleana” in Hawai’ian pidgin has taken on the meaning
of “personal responsibility”. In any case, early in the
nineteenth century, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese immigrants
settled here and began planting large fields of oranges, breadfruit,
coffee and cotton among other crops. A large sisal plantation for
making ropes for sailing vessels was located just northwest of
Holualoa…today, now-wild sisal plants, looking a bit alien with
their tall, single stalk of blossoms, can be seen in profusion along
Palani Road between Kailua and Kealekehe.
Early in the 20th
century the fields were turned over almost entirely to sugar
production and Holualoa became financial center of the Kona District.
Luther Aungst established the Kona Telephone Co here in the 1890s,
the first regional newspaper The Kona Echo was established at
Holualoa by Dr. Harvey Hayashi, one of Kona’s first full time
resident doctors. Many other schools, churches and industries,
including the Kona Bottling Works, located here in the first half of
the 20th century, but the collapse of the sugar industry
brought financial doom that coffee growing only partially staved off.
The community shrank drastically in population and commercial
importance and by 1958 only about 1000 people lived in the Holualoa
area.
In a dreamy, upcountry
Kona backwater, a community of artists, recluses, writers and seekers
of the “Old Hawai’i Lifestyle” thrived here. Recently, an
infusion of money from the newly invigorated “boutique coffee”
industry has sparked a revival of commercial life in Holualoa,
anchored in coffeehouses and art galleries.
Kona Sugar
Company and West Hawai’i Railway Company
Such was the seductive
lure of easy riches to be gained by growing sugar in Hawai’i at the
beginning of the 20th Century, that investment capital for
a large sugar plantation, sugar mill and railroad in Kona could be
raised not once, but three times.
The Kona Sugar Company
plantation was established in 1899 and every available scrap of land
was stripped of whatever crops had grown there previously and planted
in cane. Although the sugar grew well enough about 500 feet
elevation, a notable lack of fresh water in Kona’s semi-arid
landscape made Wai’aha Stream the only logical choice for the mill
site. Unfortunately, the stream flow is vastly insufficient for
year-round cane milling and the mill, built in 1901, went broke in
1903. Kona Sugar was bought by investors; renamed Kona Development
Company, the plantation again went broke in 1916 and was in turn
bought by investors in Tokyo. This group managed to eek out a profit
until the industry imploded in 1926. Originally planned to run 30
miles, the railroad was only built to total length of 11 miles in the
27 years of sugar plantation operation. Work camps, communal baths,
stables, workshops and all the requisite infrastructure of a giant
agricultural plantation lay abandoned in the Mauka Kona countryside.
During World War II, the
U.S. Army used the mill site as a training camp to acclimate troops
to warfare on their way to the tropical Pacific Theater. Fearing the
tall smokestack of the mill would act as an artillery landmark for
any invading forces, the Army pulled it down and Kona lost one of its
first post-contact, industrial landmarks.
Traces of the rail bed can
still be seen from the top of Nani Kailua and Aloha Kona residential
neighborhoods. Located just west of the town of Holualoa along
Hualalai Road (the major intersection just south of town), near the
intersection with Hienaloli Road, are impressive stone breastworks
and trestles for the railroad. Built by hand but still strong today,
the rail bed can be explored and hiked from here. Further up
Hienaloli Road from the intersection with Hualalai Road, the old mill
site remnants are still visible.
Keauhou
Store
Originally
Sasaki Store, Keauhou Store was founded by noted carpenter, coffee
farmer and prominent local business man Yoshisuki Sasaki in 1919, and
remains one of the great neighborhood stores of Kona. Run today by
Yoshiuki’s son, Rikiyo, they offer gas, sundries, fresh coffee and
local produce. Even as traffic that used to pass by the front door
now travels the makai highway, the front porch of Keauhou Store still
serves as a gathering place for local coffee farmers and neighborhood
children. A true remnant of Old Kona, Keauhou Store is a must visit.
Tong Wo
Tong Cemetery
Although
Chinese lived in the Islands since the turn of the 19th
Century, the first large scale immigration of Chinese came when they
were brought over to work the cane fields in 1852. There was soon a
burgeoning population of Chinese field workers and shopkeepers; by
1860 Chinese outnumbered Caucasians in Hawai’i. This community
established the Tong Wo Tong Cemetery to honor their ancestors and
commissioned Yoshisuki Sasaki, a noted local carpenter and prominent
business man, to build the ornate gate in 1902. In English and
Chinese the inscription on the gate reads “Tong Wo Tong Cemetery”.
Daifukuji
Soto Mission
This
Buddhist Temple has served the Mauka Kona community as a site for
worship and retreat since opening on May 27, 1921. Reverend Kaiseki
Kodama, who, since founding the first Kona Soto Mission in 1914, for
years had held services at Hanato Store and other sites, planned the
original mission building which was designed and built by Yoshisuki
Sasakai. Reverend Hosokawa opened a Japanese Language School here in
1926; the school, living quarters and social hall all enlarged upon
the original structure. The traditional Japanese music and
dance-filled O Bon Festival is held here each July; visitors are
welcome.
Lanakila
Church/Kaona Uprising
Lanakila Church was the
beginning and focal point for one of the strangest and more
interesting episodes in Mauka Kona history during the latter half of
the 19th Century. This, the last church built by the
ubiquitous Reverend John D. Paris, was finished in 1867. Lanakila
Church is still today a vibrantly strong, active parish of
Congregationalists. The quiet country setting of this church gives
little indication that it was in the center of a violent, deadly
uprising in the late 1860s.
Called the Kaona Uprising,
the events of 1867and 1868 comprised a perhaps natural reaction of
the native Hawai’ians to having been so recently, and completely,
dispossessed of their way of life, their naturist religion and their
ancient traditions. The uprising started peaceably enough; in 1867 a
man named Kaona introduced himself to the Reverend Paris, saying he
had a great quantity of Hawai’ian Bibles he wished to distribute
and asked permission to store them in the as-yet-unfinished Lanakila
Church building. The Church elders assented and the Bibles were
stored.
However, Kaona and his
followers tried to usurp the church building and its land for living
space and at the pleas of Reverend Paris the Governor, Princess
Ke’elikolani, eventually evicted them. Kaona moved his growing
group of malcontents onto a neighbor’s property until rain and cold
forced them to seek warmer lands downslope by the ocean.
Growing more powerful with
each new cult member, Kaona resisted the efforts of the local law
enforcement, in the person of Sheriff Neville, to evict them,
reportedly spitting on and destroying the first eviction order.
Preaching Hellfire and Brimstone, and aided considerably by a rash of
large earthquakes early in 1868, Kaona convinced his followers that
he was the only true Prophet of God and that the earthquakes would
destroy all but his most loyal followers.
Sensing a mood of
violence, Sheriff Neville determined to use force if necessary to
evict Kaona and his band from their squatter’s camp. In the
ensuing melee, Neville and one native policeman were killed. Kaona
then whipped his band into a religious frenzy of blood lust,
exhorting them to go forth, slay the white people and set fire to
their farms and homes. Such was the violence and threat that the
South Kona Magistrate organized a volunteer militia to for the
protection of citizens, but the uprising wasn’t put down until the
Steamer Kilauea brought troops from Honolulu to round up the violent
mob several days later.
Kaona was sentenced to 20
years imprisonment but was later pardoned and freed by King Kalakaua.
He died a free man in Kona in 1883.
Aloha
Theater
The Aloha Theater and its
cafe, serve as a gathering place for the community and the home of
independent, classic and second run films as well as the Hawaiian
International Film Festival and various community events.
Construction of the Aloha
Theater began in 1929 and was finished in 1932. long before Hawai’i
was a state. Starting life as a silent movie theater, it survived the
changeover to 'talkies' as well as the great fire of 1948 that
destroyed much of it’s’ side of town. Still in use today as a
performing arts center by the Kona Association for the Performing
Arts, performances feature live music and dance as well as film. The
Quonset-hut shaped original theater building and the original marquee
still in use are very typical of the style used in other theaters of
this period in Hawaii.
The Aloha Angel Café
associated with the theater offers a wide-ranging menu of entrees,
baked goods and deserts and is open daily for breakfast, lunch, and
dinner.
Kainaliu
Town
Lapping gently on either
side of the Hawaii Belt Road, Kainaliu Town is one of the principle
commercial centers of Mauka Kona. Kainaliu grew up at the
intersection of two donkey tracks to service the sugar, coffee and
ranching industries, sometime after the construction of Lanakila
Church in 1867.
The star attraction in
Kainaliu is, by far, the Aloha Theater and Aloha Angel Café.
This historic and beautiful theater is still the center for stage
productions of all kinds as well as cinematic shows; it is the
centerpiece for the Kona Association for the Performing Arts (KAPA).
Another of the towns interesting attractions is the amazing Oshima
Grocery and Dry Goods Store (“If we don’t have it, you don’t
need it”). In addition the town boasts numerous other businesses,
galleries, furniture, thrift, herbal medicine shops as well as
several wonderful restaurants and coffee houses. Donkey Balls has a
candy factory that offers fun tours and tasty samples and Captain
Cook Coffee has a roasting house right in town that gives weekday
tours. When the weather turns wet in West Hawai’i, or you need a
relief from the heat on the beach, a day spent browsing and eating in
cool, shady Kainaliu is a real treat.
To
celebrate the conclusion of our Historical Soirée, as long as
you are in Kainaliu Town you really ought to stop in for a cup of
famous Kona Coffee at any one of a number of local coffee shops...not
the harsh sameness of the ubiquitously monotonous Starbucks, each
individually special Kona coffee cafe reflects the personality of the
local growers and roasters who produce Kona Coffee, widely held to be
the best in all the world. Also, the singular and exclusive
galleries and stores in Kainaliu makes erfect shopping for completely
unique
gifts to take home.
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