Kalaupapa and Kalawao Settlements Cultural Landscape Report, Kalaupapa National Historical Park, Volumes I and II

Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.

The purpose of the Kalaupapa and Kalawao Settlements Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) is to support NPS efforts to preserve, manage, maintain, and interpret the significant heritage associated with Kalaupapa National Historical Park, particularly focusing on the cultural landscape. The CLR articulates a preservation philosophy intended to guide long-term treatment and management of the park’s cultural landscape and to support interpretive programming. To meet the ongoing and evolving needs of the community, the CLR also provides general treatment guidelines for compatible new construction, adaptive use of existing resources, and other potential future modifications to the cultural landscape. Kalaupapa National Historical Park was established in 1980 by the U.S. Congress as a unit of the National Park System to provide for the preservation of the unique, nationally- and internationally-significant, cultural, historic, educational, and scenic resources of the Kalaupapa Settlement, located on the north coast of the island of Molokai in the State of Hawaiʻi. The park “honors the mo’olelo (story) of the isolated Hansen’s disease (leprosy) community by preserving and interpreting its site and values. The historical park also tells the story of the rich Hawaiian culture and traditions at Kalaupapa” that extend more than 800 years. The Kalaupapa and Kalawao Settlements study area landscape features more than 250 historic buildings and structures, miles of dry stacked stone walls, numerous roads and walks, extensive plantings, more than 1,100 grave markers associated with twenty individual cemeteries, and a range of small-scale features tied to settlement lifeways spanning circa 1866 to present. Cultural landscape features exhibit deep connections with the natural environment through the use of materials, siting and orientation, and architectural expression. The Kalaupapa and Kalawao Settlements cultural landscape also exhibits distinctive patterns of spatial organization particular to this place, such as group home complexes, residential neighborhoods, administrative clusters, institutional facilities, recreational features, places of traditional use and meaning, and burial grounds that hold significant traditional value to those who have lived and worked on the peninsula. While many of the historic resources continue to support traditional community uses, others have been adapted for use by site managers and other stakeholders, such as the NPS. Kalaupapa and Kalawao Settlements features also co-exist, and sometime overlap, with traditional Hawaiian sites that relate to cultural use of the peninsula landscape, uka to kai (from the mountains to the sea), prior to 1866. As Kalaupapa and Kalawao Settlements transitions from a community focused on addressing the needs of Hansen’s disease patients to a more public landscape, NPS management of the historic property is envisioned to shift to education and interpretation of the significance of the cultural legacy preserved within the park, and the protection and appropriate management of cultural and natural resources that speak to that significance. This two-volume report specifies feature-level treatment recommendations to support landscape preservation and management.

Kalaupapa and Kalawao Settlements Cultural Landscape Report, Kalaupapa National Historical Park, Volumes I and II

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