The southern most town / city in the US is Na’alehu, Hawaii. Na’alehu looks like a small rural town from the 1950’s, but it has been here much longer. There was a sugar plantation here in the 1880’s, and it is rumored that Mark Twain rode through here in the 1860’s, so it was probably here much earlier.
The most prominent landmark in town is the abandoned theatre that was built by the Hutchinson Sugar Plantation to provide entertainment for the workers.
Perhaps the most famous is the Punaluu Bakery.
There are also a couple of small grocery stores, an Ace hardware, a post office, two or three places to eat, a very large elementary school and at least 5 or 6 churches. There is a feed store at the south end of town just before the police station. In spite of there being two grocery stores, most people do their shopping in either Kona or Hilo.
There are maybe a hundred homes in Na’alehu, and there are perhaps fifty in Waiohinu about a half mile up the highway from Na’alehu. In Waiohinu, there is a monkey pod tree that is said to have been planted by Mark Twain when he was on the island and wrote “Roughing it in the Sandwich Islands” There is no mention of the tree or either town in his book, but there is a sign next to the highway by a monkey pod tree.
The towns are surrounded by ranch lands where cattle graze. Neither town is an organized municipality, but they are a both a CPD or a census-designated place.
To the west, southwest of Naalehu, is a subdivision called Discovery Harbor. No, it is not on the ocean, and you have to go through Na’alehu to get to the ocean from Discovery Harbor, but that is what the developers chose for the name. There are around eight hundred lots about a third of an acre each in this subdivision. They have paved streets that are maintained by the county, electricity, telephone and cable TV on power poles along side the road ways. Each lot is served with potable water from the county. The subdivision is laid out around a Robert Trent Jones designed golf course with 18 holes and a community center. Not all lots are backed up to the golf course, but most all of them have some kind of an ocean view. They have an active community homeowners association complete with CC&R’s. The golf course is privately owned, not open to the public, and not very well maintained, if at all.
On the east/northeast side of Discovery Harbor, towards Na’alehu and Waiohinu, is another subdivision called Mark Twain Estates. It is interesting to note, that the same developers developed these 300 lots as developed Discovery Harbor, but they chose not to pave the streets or install water mains. Also, this was their “Phase I” with Discovery Harbor being “Phase II”. The lots in Mark Twain Estates are each just under a half an acre, the roads are rough gravel/rock,dirt roads but passable, and they do have power poles at the roads with electricity and phone. Most of the lots are overgrown with christmas berry trees over twenty feet tall.
Water is available from the county, but the meter would be on the street that divides the two subdivisions and the property owner would have to install a water line above ground from the meter to their individual lot.
At the far north/east end of the subdivision, I found two lots side by side that were for sale. And the price was almost half the price of any other lot in the subdivision, and a third the price of any lot in Discovery Harbor. After a bit of discussion and considerable work on the part of the agent, we closed on both lots in August of 2018.
These trees have been growing for thirty years, with branches that are twisted together and manyn that have fallen down. There is no way to walk through. The immediate task ahead is to clear the jungle and try to tame the vegetation. Stay tuned as we continue with this long term project.
TropicalCastaway 