Kalawao County is a county in the U.S. state of Hawaii. It is the smallest county in the 50 states by land area and the second-smallest county by population, after Loving County, Texas. The county encompasses the Kalaupapa or Makanalua Peninsula, on the north coast of the island of Molokaʻi. The small peninsula is isolated from the rest of Molokaʻi by cliffs over a quarter-mile high; the only land access is a mule trail.
Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai or Saint Damien De Veuster, born Jozef De Veuster, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious institute. He was recognized for his ministry, which he led from 1873 until his death in 1889, in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi to people with leprosy, who lived in government-mandated medical quarantine in a settlement on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokaʻi.
Molokai is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles at its greatest length and width with a usable land area of 260 sq mi (673.40 km2), making it the fifth-largest in size of the main Hawaiian Islands and the 27th largest island in the United States. It lies southeast of Oʻahu across the 25 mi (40 km) wide Kaʻiwi Channel and north of Lānaʻi, separated from it by the Kalohi Channel.
Kalaupapa Airport is a regional public use airport of the state of Hawaii, located on the northern peninsula of the island of Molokaʻi, two nautical miles north of Kalaupapa Settlement, in Kalawao County. Most flights to Kalaupapa originate from Molokai Airport or from airports on the other Hawaiian islands by unscheduled air taxis and general aviation. It is also used as a cargo facility carrying goods for Kalaupapa, which has no road access from the rest of Molokai.
Lawrence McCully Judd was a politician of the Territory of Hawaii, serving as the territorial governor. Judd is most well-known for his role in the Massie Affair, in which he commuted the sentence of three people convicted of manslaughter in the killing of Josef Kahahawai.
Marianne Cope, OSF, was a German-born American religious sister who was a member of the Sisters of St. Francis of Syracuse, New York, and founding leader of its St. Joseph's Hospital in the city, among the first of 50 general hospitals in the country. Known also for her charitable works, in 1883 she relocated with six other sisters to Hawaiʻi to care for persons suffering leprosy on the island of Molokaʻi and aid in developing the medical infrastructure in Hawaiʻi. Despite direct contact with the patients over many years, Cope did not contract the disease.
Kalaupapa is a small unincorporated community and Hawaiian home land on the island of Molokaʻi, within Kalawao County in the U.S. state of Hawaii. In 1866, during the reign of Kamehameha V, the Hawaii legislature passed a law that resulted in the designation of Molokaʻi as the site for a leper colony, where patients who were seriously affected by leprosy could be quarantined, to prevent them from infecting others. At the time, the disease was little understood: it was believed to be highly contagious and was incurable until the advent of antibiotics. The communities where people with leprosy lived were under the administration of the Board of Health, which appointed superintendents on the island.
Kalaupapa National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park located in Kalaupapa, Hawaiʻi, on the island of Molokaʻi. Coterminous with the boundaries of Kalawao County and primarily on Kalaupapa peninsula, it was established by Congress in 1980 to expand upon the earlier National Historic Landmark site of the Kalaupapa Leper Settlement. It is administered by the National Park Service. Its goal is to preserve the cultural and physical settings of the two leper colonies on the island of Molokaʻi, which operated from 1866 to 1969 and had a total of 8500 residents over the decades.
Palaʻau State Park is a state park located on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The only state park on Molokai, it overlooks the settlement and former leper colony of Kalaupapa. The park includes campsites and a picnic shelter and features a hiking trail to a phallic fertility stone.
Kalawao is a location on the eastern side of the Kalaupapa Peninsula of the island of Molokai, in Hawaii, which was the site of Hawaii's leper colony between 1866 and the early 20th century. Thousands of people in total came to the island to live in quarantine. It was one of two such settlements on Molokai, the other being Kalaupapa. Administratively Kalawao is part of Kalawao County. The placename means "mountain-side wild woods" in Hawaiian.
Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer (1826–1897) was a German who managed an early agricultural business in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
The Leper War on Kauaʻi also known as the Koolau Rebellion, Battle of Kalalau or the short name, the Leper War. Following the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the stricter government enforced the 1865 "Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy" carried out by Attorney General and President of the Board of Health William Owen Smith. A revolt broke out in Kauaʻi, against the forced relocation of all infected by the disease to the Kalaupapa Leprosy Colony of Kalawao on the island of Molokai.
The East Molokai Volcano, sometimes also known as Wailau for the Wailau valley on its north side, is an extinct shield volcano comprising the eastern two-thirds of the island of Molokaʻi in the U.S. state of Hawaii.
Wailau is an isolated valley on the North Shore of the island of Molokai, Hawaii, It can be reached by boat, helicopter or by Wailau Trail from the southeast shore of the island which is heavily overgrown and virtually impassable in places.
William Phileppus Ragsdale was a Hawaiian lawyer, newspaper editor, and translator. He was a popular figure known for being luna or superintendent of the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement. Elements of his life story influenced Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Ferdinand William Hutchison was a British physician and politician in the Kingdom of Hawaii who became a cabinet minister to King Kamehameha V. He was president of the Board of Health from 1868 to 1873 and was instrumental in the early development and management of the leper settlement of Kalaupapa. His surname is often misspelled as Hutchinson.
Olokui is the second highest peak on the island of Molokai, surpassed by only Kamakou. At 4,602 feet (1,403 m), it marks the divide between the Pelekunu and Wailau valleys. It is part of the extinct East Molokai shield volcano, which comprises the east side of the island. On the west it is bounded by the Kapapa Pali, and on the south and east sides, there is a steep drop down to the Pulena stream and Wailau River, respectively. The north side of the mountain was destroyed in a catastrophic collapse along with the majority of the northern half of the island 1.4 million years ago. The remnants of this event are 3,200 foot sea cliffs. At the summit of Olokui, much like the tops of other high mountains in Hawaii, is a remote bog. The name Olokui translates to "tall hill", and according to oral tradition, was the place the people of the village of Pelekunu retreated to in a battle between islands.
Alice Lillian Rosehill Kahokuoluna was a Congregational minister of Native Hawaiian ancestry. In her time and place, she was the first woman ordained by the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, and the only woman Christian minister in the Territory of Hawaii. Her pastorate was primarily on the Islands of Maui and Molokai, where she helped restore the Siloama Church. Her childhood and young adult church life had been at Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu, and the board of directors of that church later offered her the position of Kahu (pastor).
Kauhakō Crater is a volcanic crater located in Kalawao County, Hawaii, United States. The crater was formed between 230,000 and 300,000 years ago, as the result of the eruption of volcano Pu'u' 'Uao. It is located in the center of the Kalaupapa Peninsula on the island of Molokaʻi, and has a diameter of 500 metres (1,600 ft) by 650 metres (2,130 ft). Lake Kauhakō, located at the bottom of the crater, has the world's greatest depth-to-surface area ratio of a lake and is the tenth deepest lake in the United States. In 2011, the lake underwent an overturning event, causing hydrogen sulfide to float to the surface of the lake and lifeforms, including shrimp and plankton, to disappear.
Kapoli Kamakau, sometimes referred to as Lizzie Kapoli Kamakau, was a Hawaiian composer and musician who lived during the Hawaiian Kingdom. A close associate and friend of members of the Hawaiian royal family, she served as protège and lady-in-waiting to the future Queen Liliʻuokalani. She was a member of the singing club organized by Liliʻuokalani and her sister Likelike, and wrote music compositions with the two royal sisters. In 1888, she contracted leprosy and was exiled to the leper colony of Kalaupapa. At the settlement, she is thought to have taught singing lessons to the female patients. She died in 1891 after Queen Liliʻuokalani's visit to Kalaupapa as part of her tours of the islands.
