usalights.com - Lighthouses Of Hawaii

The Lights

Lahaina Light

McGregor point

Pauwela Light

Some of the above links may lead you to other sites on the internet.

Special Thanks To:

Tom Dutton
Officer in Charge at the Aids to Navigation Team in South Portland Maine and former Officer in charge of US Coast Guard Aids to Navigation Team Honolulu, HI.

Ted Smith
Hawaii vacationer who was kind enough to contribute to this site.

Hawaii
Lighthouse Books !

In 1898, the United States acquired two major possessions on opposite sides of the world: Puerto Rico and Hawaii. Puerto Rico, which came to this country by way of the Spanish-American War, had a more sophisticated lighthouse system than did Hawaii. In Puerto Rico the Spanish had erected modern lighthouses with up-to-date illuminating apparatuses. Hawaii, on the other hand, had primitive structures on which it rested its equally primitive lights, which often consisted of little more than household lamps.
Although the Lighthouse Board received responsibility for Puerto Rico's aids to navigation in 1900, it wasn't until January 1, 1904, that President Theodore Roosevelt transferred Hawaii's aids to navigation from the territorial government to the Board. To administer these aids more effectively, the Lighthouse Board made Hawaii a subdistrict of theTwelfth Lighthouse District and appointed an inspector and an engineer to be directly responsible for aids to navigation in the islands. When the Lighthouse Board took charge in the Hawaiian Islands there were nineteen lighthouses, twenty daymarks, and twenty buoys, as well as some sixteen private aids maintained by the Inter-Island Steamship Company and others. Only one of the lighthouses, the one at Diamond Head, had a Fresnel lens. The condition of the others had been pretty well summed up in a previous report by a civilian investigator:

The lighthouses are generally of a very crude character, the one on the top of the custom house in Honolulu being a lantern with a red cloth tied around it. On the island of Hawaii there are but six lights, and they are all “fixed,” so called, two small colored and four white ones, all very cheap and of short range.
The lights used in the lighthouses throughout the islands, except Diamond Head light, are ordinary oil lights, either double wicks or circular burners.

     On inspecting the various established lights in the islands, the subdistrict inspector found that generally the light towers were wooden trestles with little rooms at the top where the lamps were placed.
     At Kanahene Point on the south coast of the island of Maui, “two ordinary kitchen lamps” marked the low lava spit that ran into the ocean and caused many ships to founder. Similar illuminating apparatuses were found at Lahaina, also on Maui, and at Laupahoehoe and Mahu Kona on the island of Hawaii. The light at Maalaea Bay on Maui consisted of an “ordinary red lantern hung from a post,” while the Waiakea light, located on the “southeast side of Hilo Bay, in rear of wharf near entrance to Waiakea Creek,” consisted of a city arc light with a red screen in front of it. The entrance to Hilo Bay was equipped with a little better light which was composed of three small reflector lights situated on Paukaa Point. There is some evidence to indicate that the Barbers Point light and the Kalaeokalauu light on Molokai Island may have been truer lighthouses, with more substantial towers and small Fresnel lenses.
     When it moved into Hawaii the Lighthouse Board took three courses of action. It immediately went about installing Fresnel lenses of the lower orders at many of the established stations, and at others it placed lens lanterns, at the same time rebuilding some of the towers and improving living conditions at others. The board instituted a policy of taking over private aids to navigation as money became available. And lastly, the board conducted an evaluation to determine where additional lights were needed for the convenience and safety of navigation. In subsequent years the Lighthouse Board, and later the Bureau of Lighthouses, placed lighthouses and beacons to mark harbor entrances and to warn navigators of nearby rocks and shoals.

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