Honouliuli Ewa Traditional Cultural Properties: A Plan To Restore The 1825 Malden Mapped Ancient Hawaiian Trails On The Ewa Plain

A Plan To Restore The 1825 Malden Mapped Ancient Hawaiian Trails On The Ewa Plain

By John Bond, Kanehili Cultural Hui

This is truly an ahupua'a trail system and also a golden opportunity to tie directly into the
campus of UH West Oahu, Kapolei Regional Park and a planned future road access extension to Makakilo. It will also connect with Ewa Village, Ewa Mahiko Park, Ewa Village Golf Course and future City Kalaeloa shoreline beach parks on the Ewa coast.

The proposed trail system restoration also ties in with the historic Pearl Harbor - Oahu Railway bike way that will allow Kapolei and Ewa residents to walk or bike all the way along Pearl Harbor to the USS Arizona and Bowfin museums as well as the USS Missouri and Pacific Aviation Museum.

The Malden Hawaiian trails historically and culturally connect with the ancient Hawaiian
traditions of Makahiki and Lono processions marked by the position of the Pleiades
and star Sirius. The trail aligns with the ancient westerly solar views of Puu o Kapolei.

The restored trails could also allow for future historic pageantry of annual
Lono Processions and Ewa Plain Paniolo and Pa'u riders during Aloha Week (Makahiki)

The restored ancient trail would also link the shore of West Loch near West Loch Golf Course and Shoreline Park with an existing Oahu Railway bikeway to the Fish & Wildlife Honouliuli Preserve and the Oahu Railway bike path that allows walking or biking to Waipahu, Pearl City and Aiea.

Why refer to the ancient Hawaiian trails of the Ewa Plain as the 1825 Malden Trails?

The reason is that the map is an undeniable Western historic published document and a rare "snapshot" in time like a photograph. Hawaiian culture relies upon a rich oral tradition that fortunately had some cultural histories later transcribed into Hawaiian language newspapers.
However many stories were also lost forever because large numbers of native Hawaiians died within a very short time in the Honouliuli ahupua'a as a result of contact with Western diseases, particularly when the whaling industry expanded phenomenally.

There has not been such a visual documentation of the Honouliuli ahupua'a trail network other than the 1825 Malden map. We can use it to compare with later Ewa plantation maps

which followed these same ancient native trails out of logical convenience to lay out the Ewa plantation. Native Hawaiians had already created a detailed Konohiki farming and land management system based around Honouliuli and Kalo'i streams. The apocalypse of foreign diseases left large areas of previously cultivated fields and waterways abandoned.

Unfortunately also lost during the mass deaths of the native population were vast amounts of oral history about the ancient Honouliuli trails and how that population used them. Fortunately a lot can be recreated by what is known about similar trail networks on the other islands and valuable documentation by cultural historians like Kepa Maly of Kumu Pono, LLC.

Restoring the ancient Honouliuli trails is an important way to help remember the people who lived and died in Honouliuli and their once great, sustainable and highly productive Konohiki based culture. It's a legacy that our society today owes to native Hawaiian cultural history.

The main waterway through the HART Rail Project is Kalo'i which means Kalo fields waterway.
Most of its surface flow was cut off decades ago except when it rains, but around 90 percent of the Kalo'i water flow is underground through the ancient coral reef karst down to One'ula.
There is a great deal of evidence of ground water flowing under the Ewa Plain surface along the Kalo'i route down to the Ewa shore, especially after seasonal rains.

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The Governor, Legislature, Mayor and City Council Must Act QUICKLY

There is an enormous opportunity to restore this major historic and cultural feature of the Ewa Plain before it is too late and the rights of way are all bulldozed away and covered in concrete and asphalt. Because of modern development not all of the trail segments can be given a truly accurate ancient alignment, but a fairly good restoration is still very possible if acted upon quickly.

The restored trails would link together nearly every major historic and cultural location on the Ewa Plain as a walkable, bikable public trail way as proscribed under State law and with Federal NPS trail way program technical support. As an identified State right of way under legal authority Hawaii Revised Statutes, Chapter 198 D and Hawaii Administrative Rules, Title 13, Chapter 130, it would be more than just another walk/bike path, it would honor native Hawaiian cultural history, could become a nationally recognized trail system, encourage a healthier lifestyle and be a very convenient way to get around the Ewa Plain.

However this plan must be acted upon very quickly as West Oahu developers are rapidly bulldozing the trail right of way before an historic native Hawaiian trail corridor can be established. The City and State have been extremely lax in enforcing historic preservation laws and have never even full filled the long promised Leeward Bikeway plan. However at least the right of way remains preserved.

The main legal driver at this time to preserve and restore the 1825 Malden identified trails is Section 106 and 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA) which requires Federal agencies and their federally funded Projects (FTA-HART) to take into account the effects of their undertakings on historic and cultural properties. The FTA-HART Programmatic Agreement also states that impacts must be identified and mitigated.

Not only has HART already begun building an elevated fixed guide way and placing station columns directly over, by or near the trail routes, they are preparing to let contracts for three rail stations. The HART and FTA funded project is also offering all kinds of incentives for developers to make huge profits placing Transit Oriented Developments (TOD) over, by or near the ancient trails and covering them with asphalt and concrete.

HART Rail Ewa Plain Route Drills Into Major 1000 Year Old Native Hawaiian Burial Grounds

http://honouliuli.blogspot.com/2015/01/HART-rail-drills-into-burials.html

The Ewa Development Plan (EDP) And Kapolei Area Bikeway Plan (KABP)

The EDP and KABP states that corridors should be viewed as opportunities to link major open spaces with pedestrian and bike paths along open corridors. The Kapolei Area Bikeway Plan, published by Campbell Estate in 1991, encourages a "comprehensive bike way network to serve the Ewa Plain and notes that because of generally even, gradually sloping terrain, Ewa offers decided advantages for bicycle transportation and recreation."

The restoration of the 1825 Malden Trails isn't just another walkway-bikeway concept. It is an historically accurate concept and way of honoring the cultural history of the Ewa Plain, including the spiritual concept of remembering the likely up to one million original native Hawaiian population that walked these very same mountain to sea ahupua'a pathways for approximately 1000 years.

Even though covered over with volcanic dirt for the expansion of Ewa plantation for sugar cane fields, these very same trails likely still EXIST under the surface of the rich soil brought in from nearby Waianae volcano hillsides using steam engines and sluice waterways.

The 1825 Malden Trail Plan Uniquely Ties Together Historic, Cultural and Recreational Sites In Kapolei, Ewa and the UH West Oahu Campus

A major advantage of this trail plan is that a great deal of it in the primary east-west direction can use existing, mostly paved old plantation roadways or existing modern sidewalk improvements such as along Farrington Highway in Kapolei. The segments most in peril are on former Ewa Plantation agricultural fields now being converted into HART Rail stations and the major Transit Oriented Developments (TOD) that will be built around them for big developers to profit from.

Unlike the Leeward Bikeway plan which uses the right-of-way of the old Oahu Railway, which is in fact still in use by the Hawaiian Railway Society, the 1825 Malden Trail routes are well north of the Leeward Bikeway plan and also run mauka-makai (north-south) connecting the mountains to the sea.

This is truly an ahupua'a trail system and also a golden opportunity to tie directly into the campus of UH West Oahu, Kapolei Regional Park and a planned future road access extension to Makakilo. It will also connect with Ewa Village, Ewa Mahiko Park, Ewa Village Golf Course and future Kalaeloa shoreline beach parks on the Ewa coast.

The proposed trail system restoration also ties in with the historic Pearl Harbor - Oahu Railway bike way that will allow Kapolei and Ewa residents to walk or bike all the way along Pearl Harbor to the USS Arizona and Bowfin museums as well as the USS Missouri and Pacific Aviation Museum.

The Malden Hawaiian trails historically and culturally connect with the ancient Hawaiian

traditions of Makahiki and Lono processions marked by the position of the Pleiades
and star Sirius. The trail aligns with the ancient westerly solar views of Puu o Kapolei.

The restored trails could also allow for future historic pageantry of annual

Lono Processions and Ewa Plain Paniolo and Pa'u riders during Aloha Week (Makahiki)

There is even a northern Palehua trail that would connect with the future

Makakilo extension (a second way out of Makakilo.)

The southern trails of Kualaka'i and One'ula would connect with State and national Register sites Ewa Villages, Hawaiian Railway museum, MCAS Ewa Field, 1942 aircraft revetments, Barbers Point Golf Course, Kalaeloa Heritage Park, Hoakalei Foundation preserve and major planned City Kalaeloa shoreline parks and Barbers Point horse riding stables.

The restored ancient trail would also link the shore of West Loch near West Loch Golf Course and Shoreline Park with an existing Oahu Railway bikeway to the Fish & Wildlife Honouliuli Preserve and the Oahu Railway bike path that allows walking or biking to Waipahu, Pearl City, Aiea and all the way to Pearl Harbor historic attractions.

Continuing West from the Honouliuli bay near Laulaunui Island the restored trail would cross Fort Weaver Road near the original James Campbell homestead and first Ewa artisan well and pass mauka of the Child and Family Service Center which was the second site of the Ewa Plantation Hospital.

The trail would then continue along old Mango Tree Road to a point directly across from the Ewa Village Golf Course club house. It is near this location where the original 1925 Ewa Plantation Hospital existed until the later larger hospital was built overlooking Lower Village which grew around the original ancient Hawaiian trail.

At a point near the Ewa Village Golf Course the trail would go northwest to a crossroads and then across North-South Road (Kualaka'i Parkway) on to the University of West Oahu campus.

There are some really exciting possibilities here to use some historic Ewa Plantation infrastructure and large bermed ancient Hawaiian Kalo'i waterways where the Ewa Plantation railway once ran.

The trail then continues to a point near the entrance of Kapolei Golf Course and then West along Farrington Hwy to near the intersection of Farrington Hwy and Fort Barrette Rd. There is a large open lot still not developed which could incorporate the trail into its development design.

The ancient Hawaiian trail route would then cross Fort Barrette and into Kapolei Regional Park.

The Southern Extensions of Kualaka'i and One'ula trails

This section has many unique historic and cultural

The southern trails of Kualaka'i and One'ula would connect with State and National Register Ewa Villages, Hawaiian Railway museum, MCAS Ewa Field, 1942 aircraft revetments, Barbers Point Golf Course, Kalaeloa Heritage Park, Hoakalei Foundation preserve and major planned City Kalaleoa shoreline parks and Barbers Point horse riding stables.

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The Traditional Cultural Properties (TCP) aspect make these trails National Register eligible.

The only mitigation has been HART "tombstones" which say "here lies a one thousand year old highly developed native Konohiki culture" that HART and their land developers have destroyed in the second coming of the Honouliuli Apocalypse (the first was the massive and nearly total annihilation of the native Honouliuli population in the early 1800's.)

Decorated HART Rail pylons are NOT "mitigation" for putting in three rail stations on 1000 year old agricultural lands and then spawning Transit Oriented Development projects covering over EVERYTHING with massive amounts of asphalt and concrete and creating majorwater pollution from imperious surfaces.