Kauhale Preserve

As in days of old, when visitors to a Hawaiian home were greeted and invited in, we welcome you to walk along the Kauhale Heritage Trail. Come, be welcomed, and learn the history of this storied landscape.

The Kauhale Heritage Trail was developed under the guidance of the late Arline Wainaha Ku‘uleialoha Brede Eaton (1927–2013). Kupuna Eaton was a life-long resident of Pu‘uloa and a founding member of Hoakalei Cultural Foundation.

Along the 1/4 mile trail you'll see evidence of traditional Hawaiian life on the coastal plain of Honouliuli. Preserved here are platforms, enclosures, mounds, walls, and alignments created by the people who used this place and called it home. You will also see plants that once thrived along this coast and that would have been found in and around traditional Hawaiian coastal settlements.

The word kauhale means “group of houses.” It refers to the Hawaiian custom of building several structures for each home. The number of houses varied; a home near the shore here might include separate eating houses for men and women, a sleeping house, a cookhouse, and a canoe house.

The families who built kauhale here specialized in the ways of the lawai‘a fisher folk. They used locally available pōhaku puna (coral cobbles and slabs) to build house foundations, and they cultivated useful plants in shallow pockets of soil. It is believed that settlements along this coastline were used seasonally over successive generations by members of extended families.

Tour Preserve

KAUHALE 1

In ancient times the Hawaiian people first settled along sheltered bays and coves where streams and water flowed. The mouths of the valleys around Pu‘uloa, today called Pearl Harbor, were prime settlement areas. Over time, as the culture flourished and population grew, people moved into more marginal lands, such as this kula, or plain, of Honouliuli. They came to the coast here to fish, to gather shellfish and limu, and perhaps to make salt at the wetland. The Honouliuli coastline was bountiful. Kupuna Eaton recalled growing up near here in the early 1930s. “We would walk from Pu‘uloa to the shore at Keone‘ula, and then on to Kualaka‘i, and along the way we would gather limu (sea-weed). There was limu kohu, līpoa, and ‘ele‘ele. The fish were so plentiful, not like now. We would catch ‘ō‘io, kala, weke, moana, ‘ū‘ū, and all kinds of fish. It was a good place.”