Tourism Talk
Heritage trails highlight each island's unique history

By Michele Kayal
Advertiser Staff Writer

Victoria Dougherty is one of those people who has to know exactly where she is, what the place means, and how it came to be before she can relax.

When she visits Hawai'i, she's always asking about Hawaiian culture, ethnic interaction, Queen Lili'uokalani.

Imagine her surprise to discover the scattered, unmaster-planned "heritage trails" poking up around the state like solitary daisies.

Most people probably haven't noticed, but there is a grass-roots rejuvenation effort afoot that is not centered on multimillion-dollar hotel renovations or enormous retail complexes. The heritage trails, spearheaded by local communities and groups and financed by private and government investment, illuminate the unique culture and history of the individual islands: whaling and sugar on Kaua'i; the plantations and Wild West legacy of the Big Island; the royal past and Hollywood heyday of Waikiki.

And almost without knowing it, they are seducing the kind of visitors who want to learn something when they travel, the people taking garden tours and art tours and language tours, who are fueling "educational tourism," one of the industry's fastest-growing trends. And they are doing it on the visitors' own time, free of charge, soft-sell kind. Like a talk story you can wander in and out of.

Marker No. 3 on the Koloa Heritage Trail, for instance, told me and Victoria, one of my oldest friends, that the pretty bay across from the cabin we stayed in a few weeks ago was called Hanaka'ape and it was the third-largest whaling port in Hawai'i during the mid-1800s.

Every ship bringing foreign goods to Kaua'i also stopped there, and they went back out with loads of oranges, sweet potatoes, and eventually sugar. Just reading the sign conjured up the energy of the whalers, the trade ships, the swashbucklers who must have come through way before the guy picking opihi by flashlight below us was ever around.

The quaintest stop on the Big Island's 45-mile Hilo-Hamakua Heritage Coastline has to be Laupahoehoe, where the brochure encourages people to see the "school, bakery, the former Jail House, the Police Station, Post Office and the Sakado Store, a classic 'mom-and-pop' general store." And it urges "a refreshing cool drink" at the general store in Papa'aloa. Another heritage corridor is in the works for coffee country, up in Holualoa.

Perhaps the granddaddy of the heritage trails is the one in Waikiki. Throughout his life, cultural historian Dr. George Kanahele dreamed of — and lobbied for — a Waikiki that communicated its own spiritual importance and that brought visitors and kama'aina together in the essence of ho'okipa. Much of the 21-point trail he envisioned was in place before he died in September, and guided tours that started up in April have been drawing visitors and local people alike, the final piece of his plan.

You could walk right by most of the markers on these trails, and certainly miss the accompanying brochures, which you have to find in a rack of fliers or have to know to ask for at a concierge or activities desk. Their financing is measly — only $70,000 for the Koloa Trail, for instance — especially when viewed alongside beach renovations, harbor improvements and other efforts made to entertain and maintain Hawai'i's visitors.

Maybe that's because the trails don't bring anything in return. Or at least don't seem to. They don't generate any revenue. There is no master plan, or vision team, or multibazillion-dollar renovation, or "themed" shopping venue behind them. And nobody's coming to Hawai'i just to see them.

But the trails do one thing that many more marketing dollars have been spent on over the years: they create a truly Hawaiian sense of place for people like Victoria and others who want to feel it.

And they are proof that some very small, very simple things, also can make a big difference in the way people feel about a place.