History Of Kailua
It's a community of beaches and a former home to royalty. Our Lucky You Live Hawaii feature this week takes us to Windward Oahu to celebrate Kailua.
A thousand years ago, the area known today as Kailua was primarily ocean. It was slowly filled in by the runoff from mountain streams. There was taro growing everywhere. Then came rice, watermelons, gourds, cucumbers and other crops.
The area around Kawainui Marsh and Maunawili Valley contain some of the oldest recorded sites of habitation in Hawaii. But the earliest signs of community are centered around the area now called Castle Junction. The intersection of the Pali Highway and Auloa Road.
"There was a taylor shop and there was a butcher and there was the barber shop and there was the school, there was a one room school house which was right there and a pool hall and on and on. It was the beginning of an urbanized kind of life," says Paul Brennan of the Kailua Historical Society.
Drive back deep into Maunawili Valley and you'll be on the Old Pali Road.
"The Old Pali Highway took you directly through Maunawili. And it took you from Maunawili over to Waimanalo. And there was no three lane modern highway going into Kailua," describes Brennan.
Just off Old Pali Road is the Boyd Estate. In need of repair, back in the 1870's, it served as a home for Queen Liliuokalani.
"She would come on the water by way of Waimanalo. And then the carriage pulled by horses would bring her into Maunawili. And Maunawili was the place where she chose to rest and recuperate," says Brennan.
The Queen would entertain here. Welcoming guests as they made their way through the rows of palms that still stand today. She's said to have written Aloha 'oe here.
Coconut Grove was one of the first subdivisions in Kailua built in the 1930's.
"Most people don't know that at the outbreak of the second World War there were only about a thousand people living in what is now Kailua. But by the end of the war, there were somewhere around four thousand people," explains Brennan.
And it's population has continued to grow ever since. With Kawainui Marsh, the largest wetland in the state and several beaches boasting calm blue waters and white sands, Kailua is one of Honolulu's most vibrant bedroom communities and just one more reason you are so Lucky You Live Hawaii.
If you know of a person, place, or thing that makes us lucky we live Hawaii, we'd like to share them with our viewers. E-mail your suggestions to Lyle (lucky@khnl.com) and also enter to win a $100 Royal Hawaiian Heritage gift certificate.
