HANALEI — One of Hawai‘i’s most scenic stretches of highway runs from the Princeville Shopping Center to Ke‘e Beach. Protecting the beautiful viewplanes and features that highlight the history of this section of Kuhio Highway — officially known as state
HANALEI — One of Hawai‘i’s most scenic stretches of highway runs from the Princeville Shopping Center to Ke‘e Beach.
Protecting the beautiful viewplanes and features that highlight the history of this section of Kuhio Highway — officially known as state Highway 560 — has been a long-term goal of the Hanalei Roads Committee.
Last month, this North Shore-based organization received word that Highway 560 is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Hanalei Roads Committee member Barbara Robeson said the highway would now have “an increased level of review” if projects affecting the road are proposed.
She said this would protect elements of the road, like its wooden guardrails, from being “automatically replaced with something not compatible with the road’s rural character.”
The 10-mile section of road was determined to be significant in the history of the United States, one of only about 100 roads nationwide that meets criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, according to a press release from the North Shore roads organization.
The National Register is administered by the National Park Service.
The road corridor was placed on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places in 2003.
“We’re delighted,” said Robeson, who is a former head of the Kaua‘i County Planning Commission, of the listing of the highway on the National Register.
“Some of the bridges (along the road) were made eligible in 1976. It took a long time to get it done.”
Robeson said the road helps to maintain the traditional rural Hawaiian sense of place along its route.
A statement from the service said Highway 560 was found to be significant in two areas: “(It) embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction,” and it is “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history.”
The road is said to follow a pre-historic Hawaiian walking trail, and the route was first described by Eric Knudsen in his 1895 journal: “A wagon trail ended in Hanalei then, so after Hanalei, travelers kept to the shoreline where the rivers were easiest to cross.”
Today, Route 560 includes 13 historic bridges and culverts, most of which are one-lane wide. Roads committee co-chair and engineer Brian Hennessey noted that the bridges represent two popular types of construction popular in early 20th-century Hawai‘i: steel truss and reinforced-concrete, flat-slab construction.
The road from Princeville to Ke‘e Beach was the last section of Kaua‘i’s “Belt Road,” a paving project that began in about 1911 under the leadership of then-county engineer Joseph Moragne, and provided a paved road from Mana to Ha‘ena when it was completed by the end of that decade.
Bridge construction along what today is known as state Highway 560 began with the completion of the Hanalei Bridge in 1912, followed by bridges over streams at Wai‘oli, Waipa and Waikoko.
Few changes in the alignment have occurred since 1912.
Representatives of the state Department of Transportation, Highways Division, are working with the community on a plan to maintain the historic and scenic qualities of the road, while still addressing safety concerns, according to members of the roads committee.
Editor Chris Cook may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 227) or mailto:ccook@pulitzer.net.
