One late afternoon in 1809 a young adventurer from Massachusetts was standing on the deck of a sailing ship off Kawaihai. He looked over his shoulder and, seeing no one was looking, jumped overboard and swam to shore.
A refugee on the run.
History says, “He hid behind a thicket until the ship sailed over the horizon.”
He walked inland across the scrubby terrain of Kona and eventually befriended the Hawaiian King and The king granted him some land.
The young refugee’s name was John Parker and he turned that small gift of land into the Parker Ranch, the biggest ranch in the world.
His grandson was Samuel Parker, the town of Kamuela is named after him.
For centuries everyone’s been trying to get to the Kona side.
A thousand years earlier, brave Polynesians sailed 2,000 miles across a lonely, swaying ocean. After sailing for months they looked up in amazement at monstrous mountains rising from the sea. They were staring at Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea and Hualali.
They came ashore at Ka’u landing and not long after that were farming and fishing along the Kona Coast. The first Kona residents.
The next foreigner to land near Kona was Captain James Cook.
In the winter of 1778 his two ships sailed into Kealakekua Bay. After partying with the Hawaiians much too long for their liking, he sailed northward along the coast where he hit a storm near Kona. It broke the mast of one of his ships and he had to sail back to Kealakekua Bay.
Hawaiians in Kona must have encountered the Englishmen, near Honokahau Harbor are petroglyphs of an old sailing ship and an English musket.
Cook sailed back to the bay and after suffering a real bad headache inflicted by disgruntled Hawaiians, he never left Hawaii.
Captain Cook was dying to get to Kona, literally.
Not long after that in 1819, the Boston sailing ship, Thaddeus, sailed into Kona Bay. Onboard was the upright, or is that uptight, Reverend Hiram Bingham. Reverend Bingham and his jolly crew built the old Mokuaikaua Church in downtown Kona. And we know the rest.
When Reverend Bingham arrived the Hawaiians had the land and the missionaries had religion, but after while the missionaries had the land and the Hawaiians had religion.
King Kalakaua liked Kona so much he had his palace here and on the balcony of the palace, drank brandy with writers Robert Lewis Stevenson and Jack London, watching the Kona sunset as they raised high their brandy snifters.
Paniolo cowboys by the seawall floated cows out to waiting ships.
Movie stars soon discovered Kona. Old timers in town remember the antics of Lee Marvin and Richard Boone back in the ‘70s when they ranted and raved in the bars downtown. Funny man Jonathan Winters tagged along with them, cracking jokes no doubt.
The three of them hauled in the Marlin on Marvin’s boat, “Blue Hawaii.”
Bold Polynesians, a famous rude English Captain, a refugee jumping ship and a stern old reverend, kings and cowboys, writers and movie stars all had one thing in common — they wanted to get to the Kona side.
Dennis Gregory is a writer, artist, singer, teacher and Kailua-Kona resident who mixes truth, humor and aloha in his biweekly column. He can be reached at makewavess@yahoo.com