Published October 9, 2004. Reprinted with permission from The Maui News.

Gathering Place of Mormons on Lanai Recognized

LANAI CITY. Mention Laie, Oahu, and many people's first thoughts will turn to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But a century and half ago, the focus would have been on the Palawai ahupuaa on Lanai because it was Hawaii's first major gathering place for the islands' Mormons.

On Sunday, church members gathered to dedicate a marker on Castle & Cooke land off the road between Manele Bay and Lanai City. The marker commemorates the sesquicentennial of the establishment in 1854 of the City of Joseph, which had been a temporary gathering place for church members.

The dedication of the marker was conducted by Arnold K. Wunder, president of the Kahului Hawaii Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The temporary gathering place was part of a concept developed by the church because of intense persecution in America and elsewhere during the 19th century. At these sites, Mormons would gather before traveling to the churchıs headquarters in Utah, as converts were expected to do.

The first Mormon missionaries arrived in Hawaii in December 1850. In 1854, membership was more than 3,000, and Palawai was chosen as a temporary gathering place. That October, missionary Ephraim Green began to lay out a plans for the the fertile land, with the goal of establishing a self-sustaining agricultural community.

The land between the Waiapaa and Pulikoae gulches was owned Hawaiian Chief Levi HaŒalelea, who agreed to let the church use it on an experimental basis for four or five years, after which it would be leased at $175 per year.

The site became home to 300 people, who built homes, a church and school. Difficulties in shipping their products to markets in Lahaina and on other islands, along with those encountered in most agricultural endeavors, led the Mormons to look elsewhere for a gathering place, said Carl Van Zweden, a church member from Lahaina.

As it says on the historic marker, The seeds planted here in Palawai in the hearts and minds of the people were harvested in Laie.

The Oahu town is home to Brigham Young University-Hawaii and the Polynesian Cultural Center, both continuing the self-sustaining community concept.

The concept of the temporary gathering place was replaced in the early 1900s with the idea that strong, permanent communities should be developed where church members lived, Van Zweden said.

Sunday's dedication also included a historical presentation about the Hawaiian Latter-day Saints of the period 1850-61 by Fred E. Woods, executive director of the Mormon Historic Society, and Aunty Genoa Keawe singing "Hawaii Aloha."

Also participating in the dedication were Ronald K. Hawkins, Honolulu Mission president; Riley Moffat, president of the Mormon Pacific Historical Society; and Kim Wilson, chairman of the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation.