02/03/2026
Did you ever wonder why so much land was vacant in the Kawaipapa and Wakiu area? Even during the Sugar Plantation days it went unused. Most of the makai area is too rocky for sugar although it did provide a solid place for a Pineapple Cannery for awhile. The cattle ranch didn't use it but if you've hiked thru the alien vegetation that has covered much of the area, you've seen lots of stone walls and indications of previous human activity. Queen Ka'ahumanu, her sister and many others grew up and lived in the location during and after the wars with the Hawaii island chiefs. The State ended up with title to much of the land and decided to give Hana people a chance to buy the 1 acre lots along the Hana road in Wakiu. Most of the land is still unoccupied. In 1853 smallpox, a disease that had killed untold numbers of people in other countries, came to O'ahu and escaped quarantine in a place that had been so isolated that the population had no natural resistance that the survivors of other places might have had. Hawaiian historian Samuel M. Kamakau had married a Kipahulu woman S. Hainakolo and he wrote that he personally had treated and saved hundreds of patients in Kipahulu that the government couldn't reach. From June till Sept. the dead were stacked up like "dried Kukui twigs" on O'ahu. "On Maui there was not a member of the Board of Health who did anything to care the sick as they were cared for by the government in Honolulu and places in its vicinity. The police just carried them away to some distant place and left them without medical care or proper food. The whole population was wiped out from Wakiu, the uplands of Kawaipapa, Palemo, and mauka of Waika'akihi in the Hana district, and so for Kipahulu and Kaupo." [source: S.M. Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs of Hawai'i, pages 417-418] DidjaKnow? Now you do. 🤔
