File photo
Salt Lake, back when it was a lake.
This week's question caught us doddering old fuds by surprise -- why is that area in Moanalua called Salt Lake? There is a lake in
Salt Lake historyLook at this picture taken in the early 1960s. Kids fished, rare Hawaiian seabirds soared above, fresh winds rippled the surface into musical susurrations. But the lake and the land around it were owned by the Damon Estate, who, at the time, were land-rich and cash-poor, and had trouble unloading another plot of land near the airport called Damon Tract.
In stepped developers Clarence Ching and Kan Jung Luke, and Damon sold much of the property in the area to Luke's Loyalty Investments and Ching's International Development Co. These guys were wheeler-dealers in local Democratic Party circles -- Ching was Gov. Burns' primary fund-raiser -- and by the mid-'60s Ching had permission to fill the lake to make a golf course.
There was plenty of opposition, mainly from older Hawaiians who hated to see the waters go, and from conservationist haoles, up against pro-development, upwardly mobile Asian-Americans. It may have been the single biggest preservation issue in Hawaii during the '60s, but by the '70s, Salt Lake was reduced to an algae-choked mosquito farm.
Ancient Hawaiians called the site aliapa'akai, or "salt-encrusted," a naturally salty spring that deposited extremely fine salt on the shore. A Westerner looking upon the magically salt-glazed plants on the shore remarked that Salt Lake was "the principle natural curiosity this island affords."
Destroying natural resources isn't a modern phenomenon. The salt was scooped up and sold by Hawaiian ali'i, along with the sandalwood trees, and pretty soon it was all gone. Sugar-cane fields planted around the lake leaked so much silt into the water that the saltwater spring plugged up, and the natural balance of the water was thrown off-kilter.
After that, it was a matter of time.
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin
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