HILO — Away from his home on Oahu, Keoni Fox says standing along the shore at Waikapuna — the site of a former fishing village below Naalehu — feels like stepping back in time.
No highways or concrete buildings can be seen, just waves crashing against a pristine coastline.
“It’s a feeling that you get at Waikapuna, almost that you turn back time to old Hawaii before all of the development,” he said. “There’s something just magical about that. I think it’s something people in Ka‘u still treasure.”
Fox, who grew up in Ka‘u and still visits regularly, is a board member with the Ala Kahakai Trail Association, which seeks to protect and restore the ancient coastal trail that connected hundreds of land divisions known as ahupuaa around Hawaii Island.
That trail, also known as ala loa, can be found mostly on the leeward side and still hugs the coast along Waikapuna. The nonprofit association hopes to purchase that land to protect the path and other cultural and natural features there for future generations.
Fox said the landowner is willing to sell for conservation, but the group would need to buy the entire 2,209-acre parcel, which stretches mauka to Mamalahoa Highway. The price tag could be about $6 million.
The association could get its first appropriation when the state Land Board considers a funding request.
The group, with help from the Trust for Public Land, is seeking $2 million from the state’s Legacy Land Conservation Program. The land conservation commission is recommending the group receive $838,346 this year, while state Department of Land and Natural Resources staff recommends $100,000 goes to the group.
Laura Kaakua, native lands project manager for the land trust, said more money could be sought next year through the fund if the appropriation comes up short.
She said fundraising will be a multiyear, if not long-term effort. Hawaii County’s Public Access, Open Space and Natural Resources Preservation fund is another option. An application will be filed this summer.
If acquired, the plan would be to keep the land much the way it is, with a community-based management approach to ensure access doesn’t become destructive to the natural and cultural resources, she said. Mauka lands would continue to be leased to ranchers.
“Everything you look at basically tells of the past,” Kaakua said. “You can still make out the heiau, you can still make out settlements, house sites.”
Fox credited the landowner with providing access to the shoreline to local residents. But he said he is concerned about plans for an approximately 20-lot subdivision on the mauka portion, which could go forward if they can’t raise enough money to buy the land.
“There is the beauty, the sense of place,” Fox said. “I think you will lose that with any kind of development there.”
Nohea Kaawa of Waiohinu often takes students down to the area, which she said is a place to connect with the natural environment, and the history of people who resided there.
“It’s definitely a place where our shark god still lives,” she said. “It’s a place to reconnect with those aumakua.”
Kaawa said Native Hawaiians lived there until tidal waves in the 19th century inundated the coast, during an event known as the “Ka‘u cataclysm.”
“It’s almost like … they packed up and left and everything is just still there,” she said, referring to former house sites and shelters that still exist.
The trail association is a nonprofit that works with the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail, which falls under the National Park Service.
The designated historic trail encompasses a 175-mile corridor from ‘Upolu Point to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
The property would be one of the first purchased through the association.
A 59-acre property south of Puuhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park was purchased for $3.5 million last year with help from the land trust.
Aric Arakaki, superintendent for the trail corridor, said there isn’t an inventory of the trail that shows how much of it is still intact. He said about half of the corridor is on private land.
Ka‘u has some of the best preserved stretches since it’s largely free of shoreline development, Arakaki said.
Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune-herald.com.