By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Behind Gerry DeBenedetti, south of Puu o
Kaimuki park, is the back end of Diamond Head.
IT'S not exactly a garden spot, it's pretty well overrun with weeds, and there are no shade trees or border plants. But it is a communal backyard for East Kaimuki, largely because the residents are the only ones who know about it. Actually Puu o Kaimuki is a mini-park, part of the City's Department of Parks and Recreation, and belongs to all of us. Kaimuki saves its
‘backyard’ mini-parkNeighbors rally to stop hilltop development
The park is on a hill above the Kaimuki Fire Station between 13th Avenue and Ocean View Drive. There is no automobile access because the driveway into the park is permanently chained, but it's only a short walk to the top of the hill. And when you get up there, the view is spectacular, a 360 degree look at the city. Molokai is usually visible to the east, occasionally you can see Lanai, and a few times a year you get a three-island day, with Haleakala on Maui above the horizon.
The northern view is of the Koolau Mountains and the many hillside neighborhoods, and the southern view is the back of Diamond Head without its postcard profile. Look west and you see all of downtown Honolulu and the Ewa plain.
One of the nearby residents who has been involved from the beginning in saving the area for a city park is Gerry DeBenedetti. A student of the history of her neighborhood, DeBenedetti has a framed map of the area made in 1907. "The map shows that this is actually a volcanic crater. Kaimuki itself is formed from the lava dome, with the rift zone running up Wilhelmina Rise to the Koolaus. When the crater fell in on itself, something that Diamond Head never did, the lava ran down to form Kapahulu," she said.
"Puu o Kaimuki is the historical name, meaning little hill of Kaimuki, but we used to call it Menehune Hill - there was a legend that the menehune had an okolehao still up here." One theory on the naming of Kaimuki is "ka imu ki," the ti oven, referring to where the menehune fanned the charcoal of ti-leaf oven distilleries.
This is what the parks department calls a passive park - it's too steep for games, and there are no facilities, no bathrooms or benches, just the flagpole. Neither is there any parking, and spaces can be hard to find on the residential streets.
The flagpole each year is hung with green Christmas lights to form the shape of a tree, and is visible for miles around each night during the holidays. But nobody has ever seen a flag on it, and nobody is exactly sure of who put it there.
A World War II bunker was on the property at the time the city took it over. "We wanted to keep it there, as a piece of history, but the city said that the rebars were rusted and that it was dangerous because it was falling down. When they actually brought the bulldozer in, it turned out to be a huge job to knock it down - it was in good condition.
"The University of Hawaii once had an observatory up here, back when there weren't many lights in the area to ruin the view. It was built in 1910 to observe Halley's Comet, and at the time held the only large telescope on Oahu. When the comet had passed, the telescope was used to spot ships arriving over the horizon, in order to notify the wharf to get ready," DeBenedetti said.
Outside of that, nothing much happened there until the 1980s, when the city toyed with the idea of making it a lookout for tourists. That evidently sparked the interest of a developer with notions of a subdivision on the 2.3 acres. If nothing else rouses community action, a developer will, and the neighborhood rallied against the plan.
After 10 years of effort, they convinced the city to turn the hilltop into a park. In the meantime, however, the city signed an agreement with Honolulu Cellular Telephone Co. to lease a small part of the area for a telephone transmitter station in a concrete building that was part of an old reservoir.
There's a sort of half-hearted planting of hibiscus around the structure, which somewhat lessens its impact, but it's not very pretty. On the other hand, Honolulu Cellular paid the city $50,000 for the first 10 years, with an annual fee for each five-year period beyond that. This helps offset the $270,500 the city paid to knock down the bunker and attempt some landscaping.
DeBenedetti said that the original plan was to use native plants suitable for the dry rocky soil. Ilima once grew in the area, but it has never been replanted. Kaunaoa was also growing there, but it's a parasitic vine that is just short of a weed.
Until either the city or interested volunteers provide landscaping, Puu o Kaimuki will probably remain in its somewhat scruffy condition. The neighbors don't mind, they just enjoy the view. DeBenedetti explained, "On the night of the full moon, you can always find 10 or 15 people up here. Somebody's got an ukulele or maybe a guitar, and there's soft music and the moon lighting up the sea and city. It's magic."
The Bottom Lion: Jill Laughlin, a botanist at Lyon Arboretum, reports that on a recent tour of the arboretum grounds for fourth- graders, she asked if any of the kids had a question. One little girl, who looked disappointed, raised her hand and said, "I looked and looked, but I never saw the lion."
Gardening Calendar in Do It Electric!
Send queries along with name and phone number to:
Evergreen by Lois Taylor, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu 96802.
Or send e-mail to features@starbulletin.com.
Please be sure to include a phone number.
Evergreen by Lois Taylor is a regular Friday feature of the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin. © 1996 All rights reserved.
