North Shore border 'mystery' unraveled

By Will Hoover
Advertiser North Shore Writer

Waialua and Hale'iwa, two little towns with distinct personalities, are linked somewhere between Ka'ena Point and Kahuku along O'ahu's scenic North Shore.

In the 1920s, much of what is now known as Hale'iwa was simply called Waialua, which is both a town and a district. Advertiser library photo

Hale'iwa, which initially had been a place in Waialua, began to emerge as the dominant community in the 1960s. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

"Pretty much what we go by is that everything mauka of Waialua Beach Road is Waialua, and everything makai of the road is considered Hale'iwa," said Thomas How, 37, who has lived most of his life in the area, both in Waialua and Hale'iwa.

Then again, borders can be tricky things. People such as Bob Vickery could be forgiven for wondering exactly where Waialua ends and Hale'iwa begins.

Vickery, 46, was recently confounded by the location of the historic old building across Kamehameha Highway from Fujioka Market, a good half-mile into the Hale'iwa side of Waialua Beach Road.

"I can never figure it out," said Vickery, scratching his head. "Why is the Waialua Court House right in the middle of Hale'iwa? I've lived around these parts for 12 or 13 years. And, I'm sorry, I just don't know."

Vickery isn't alone. Back in the 1920s, a local newspaper photo showed a safety coach "traveling through Waialua." Today, anyone in these parts would tell you that exact same stretch of road goes through Hale'iwa.

Follow that road farther into Hale'iwa and you pass the Waialua Community Association building. Still farther, we find the Waialua Liliuokalani Protestant Church in the very heart of Hale'iwa. Tombstones in the church cemetery dating back to the 1840s read, "Waialua, Oahu." Not one mentions Hale'iwa.

History buffs who bother to trek down memory lane discover that before it was called Hale'iwa Elementary School, it was Waialua Elementary School. It's mysterious.

Ask the right folks, though, and the mystery begins to unravel.

"Hale'iwa is a sort of popular name, and a recent arrival among names," said author and former state statistician, Robert Schmitt, who helped establish the statistical boundaries of Waialua and Hale'iwa decades ago.

"Hale'iwa is a town within the Waialua Court District. And so is Waialua town. They are defined for statistical purposes as 'urban places.' But they have no legal definition," meaning neither is an incorporated community.

So while both towns are in the Waialua District, each is statistically defined more or less along the Waialua Beach Road parameters described by Thomas How. Those lines also generally correspond to each town's ZIP code.

"The old-timers all know this is the Waialua District," said lifelong Hale'iwa resident Helen Bajo. "None of the newcomers know it. They all ask, 'Why is the Waialua Court House in Hale'iwa?' "

Bajo says originally there was one post office for the entire district. It was, and still is, in Waialua town — ZIP code 96791. Then, in the 1950s, she says a subpost office was added to the courthouse and it became known as the Hale'iwa post office.

Today, the Hale'iwa post office, ZIP Code 96712, is across the street from the Waialua Community Association.

"The long and short of it is that the area used to revolve around Waialua because of the sugar mill, and Hale'iwa was small," said Antya Miller, president of the Hale'iwa Main Street business association. "Sunset Beach didn't exist. Gradually, Hale'iwa began to grow. Then the sugar mill in Waialua closed. So, now Hale'iwa is the main commercial center.

"When I was growing up, it was just the other way around."

Lifelong area resident and keeper of the local past George Tanabe, 87, agrees.

"This was all Waialua at one time — from Ka'ena Point to Waimea," he said. "Hale'iwa was centered around the Hale'iwa Hotel."

Before that, the history of Hale'iwa gets murky. There is no detailed factual account. There are numerous theories, such as one that Christian missionaries who settled in Waialua in the 1830s also established a seminary along the banks of the Anahulu Stream that was called Hale-Iwa (which literally translated means House of Frigate Bird).

What seems clear is that initially Hale'iwa was little more than a place — not a town — in Waialua.

Then, in 1899 O'ahu sugar baron Benjamin Dillingham opened the elegant Hale'iwa Hotel next to where the now-famous Rainbow Bridge crosses the Anahulu River.

The massive colonial retreat, hunting lodge and social center catered to folks who traveled from Honolulu on the Oahu Railroad & Land Co. line, which Dillingham had founded 10 years earlier to haul freight.

The hotel and passenger train provided the means for travelers to visit Waialua, which had previously been favored by ali'i and members of the Hawaiian royalty, including Queen Liliuokalani, Hawai'i's last monarch, who made her summer home on Anahulu Stream.

By the time the hotel was demolished in 1952, Hale'iwa had become a town in its own right. With the passing of the hotel and railroad, however, it was a town suffering from an identity crisis. Waialua, with its prosperous sugar mill, remained dominant.

That situation began to reverse itself in the late 1960s after the classic surfing film — "Endless Summer" — blew the cover off the North Shore's world-class waves. Over the next three decades, Hale'iwa's presence grew in direct proportion to its renown as a coastal surfing village.

Meanwhile, Waialua's identity diminished in direct proportion to the failing fortunes of the Waialua Sugar Mill, which shut down in 1997. But fortune is fickle in this still-remote section of O'ahu.

There are those on either side of the dividing line who insist that Waialua will stage a comeback.

For now Waialua can be secure in the knowledge that, come what may, it will manifest itself in well-known structures throughout the Hale'iwa side of the border.

Even if old-timers are the only ones who know the reason why.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8038.