Across nine generations, Archie Kalepa’s family has seen the waterfront in Lahaina, a town on the island of Maui, undergo repeated transformation.
Once the home of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s royalty, Lahaina’s shores over the centuries became a stop for whalers plundering the seas, for missionaries spreading the Christian gospel, for plantation owners who opened canneries to prepare their bounty of pineapples for export.
More recently, tourists packed high-end galleries and shoreline restaurants that offered sunset meals of ahi tuna and taro.
Relics of each of those layers of history were turned to ash a year ago, when an Aug. 8 inferno roared through Lahaina, killing at least 102 people.
That would mean doing what for many has seemed unthinkable until now: transforming the famous waterfront by peeling back history, removing some of the gift shops, restaurants and beachwear boutiques that, before the fire, perched above the shoreline.
Persons:
Archie Kalepa’s, Kalepa
Locations:
Lahaina, Maui