In Haleakala National Park, Crews Look To The Past To Understand The Present 0 More funding and focus has recently been put toward restoring some of Maui’s most historic places.
The signs are so subtle that the untrained eye might not even notice. A section of flattened earth. An old rock wall. The grove of ulu and mango trees, so old they stopped producing fruit long ago.
But to Rachel Hodara Nelson, each stone and subtle trace of a once-traveled path tells the story of the family who once lived here. She’s spending a sunny summer day working with a colleague to identify anything that might pose a threat to the old homesite, in what’s now the heart of the Kipahulu District of Haleakala National Park.
This is where the Po‘onika family called home until the early 1900s. Hodara Nelson knows from oral history that this is where one of the men used to sit on a bench, mending saddles. His family moved away long ago, and now what’s left of his house is a small section of flattened dirt, held up by a foundation made of stones. It looks as if the brush that’s grown up around it could soon swallow the whole place up.
