Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [272]
Think your flight to Hawaii was long? It took the Baldwins 161 days to get here from their native Connecticut. These early missionaries traveled neither fast nor light, and the house still holds the collection of china and furniture they brought with them around the Horn.
Waine′e (Waiola) Church
Dating to 1832, Hawaii’s first stone church, Waine′e Church (535 Waine′e St), was cursed with bad luck. The steeple collapsed in 1858. In 1894 royalists, enraged that the minister supported Hawaii’s annexation, torched it to the ground. A second church, built to replace the original, burned in 1947, and the third was blown away in a storm a few years later. One might get the impression that the ancient Hawaiian gods didn’t take kindly to the house of this foreign deity! The fourth version, now renamed Waiola Church, has been standing since 1953 and still holds Sunday services.
The adjacent cemetery holds as much intrigue as the church. Here lie several notables: Reverend William Richards, Lahaina’s first missionary; Governor Hoapili, who ordered the original church built; and Queen Ke′opuolani, wife of Kamehameha the Great and the mother of kings Kamehameha II and III.
Library Grounds
History doesn’t exist just in books at the Lahaina Public Library (Click here). Although they don’t reveal themselves at first glance, the grounds here hold a cluster of historic sites. The library yard was once a royal taro field, where Kamehameha III toiled in the mud to instill in his subjects the dignity of labor.
On the ocean side of the library sat the first Western-style building in Hawaii, the Brick Palace, erected by Kamehameha the Great around 1800 so he could keep watch on arriving ships. Despite the name, this ‘palace’ was a simple two-story structure built by a pair of ex-convicts from Botany Bay. All that remains today is the excavated foundation.
Walk to the nearby shoreline to see the Hauola Stone, a flat seat-shaped rock that early Hawaiians believed emitted healing powers to those who sat upon it. To spot this water-worn stone, look to the right as you face the ocean – it’s just above the water’s surface, the middle of three lava stones. In the 14th and 15th centuries royal women sat on the stone while giving birth to the next generation of chiefs and royalty.
About 100ft to the south stands the Lahaina Lighthouse, the site of the first lighthouse in the Pacific. Commissioned in 1840 to aid whaling ships pulling into Lahaina, it shone with a beam fueled by sperm-whale oil. The current structure dates from 1916.
Hale Kahiko
The three thatched houses at Hale Kahiko (Lahaina Center, 900 Front St; admission free; 9am-6pm) replicate a slice of an ancient Hawaiian village. The location at the back of a shopping center is not without its irony, but the site nonetheless offers an insightful glimpse of Hawaiian life before Western development swept through the landscape.
The hale (houses) were hand-constructed true to the period using ohia-wood posts, native pili grass thatch and coconut-fiber lashings. The grounds are planted in the types of native flora that Hawaiians relied upon for food and medicinal purposes. Each hale had a different function; one was used as the family sleeping quarters, one as a men’s eating house, and the third as a workshop where women made tapa. Inside you’ll find gourd containers, poi pounders and other essentials of Hawaiian life.
Hale Pa′i
Hawaii’s first printing press was at Hale Pa′i ( 667-7040; 980 Lahainaluna Rd; admission by donation; 10am-4pm Mon-Fri), a cottage adjacent to Lahainaluna High School. Although its primary mission was making the Bible available to Hawaiians, the press produced many other works, including the first Hawaiian botany book and, in 1834, Hawaii’s first newspaper.
So heavily used was the original Ramage press that it wore out in the 1850s, but several of the items printed from it are still on display. Should you want to try your hand as a 19th-century pressman, a replica of the original equipment can be used