Āhualoa is an unincorporated rural area

Unincorporated area

In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality.To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city, town, or village with its own government. An unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a municipal government...

 along the Hamakua Coast on the Island of Hawaii

Hawaii (island)

The Island of Hawaii, also called the Big Island or Hawaii Island , is a volcanic island in the North Pacific Ocean...

, Hawaii County

Hawaii County, Hawaii

Hawaii County is a county located in the U.S. state of Hawaii in the Hawaiian Islands. It is coterminous with the Island of Hawaii, often called the "Big Island" to distinguish it from the state as a whole. As of the 2010 Census the population was 185,079. The county seat is Hilo. There are no...

, Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

The name is believed to mean either "long mound" or "long cloud", in the Hawaiian language

Hawaiian language

The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...

. The latter is easily understood from the extremely high rainfall and cloud cover that is typical of the area.

Geography

Ahualoa is located at 20°03' North, 155°28' West (20.06, -155.48).

The Old Mamalahoa Highway is the principal road running through Ahualoa. The land is zoned agricultural. A typical lot is 5 acres (2 ha) in size. Land use is for residence and small-scale agriculture, including farming, orchards and livestock.

History

There is no record of Native Hawaiian settlement in the area that is now Āhualoa. It is likely that the Native Hawaiians

Native Hawaiians

Native Hawaiians refers to the indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands or their descendants. Native Hawaiians trace their ancestry back to the original Polynesian settlers of Hawaii.According to the U.S...

 visited the area for extraction of resources from the ōhia lehua

Metrosideros polymorpha

The ōhia lehua is a species of flowering evergreen tree in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, that is endemic to the six largest islands of Hawaii. It is a highly variable tree, being tall in favorable situations, and much smaller when growing in boggy soils or on basalt...

-hāpuu

Cibotium

Cibotium is a genus of eleven species of tropical tree fern—subject to much confusion and revision—distributed fairly narrowly in Hawaii , Southeast Asia , and the cloud forests of Central America and Mexico...

 native forest, but did not live there, as wet forest was not considered a desirable place to live.

The land of Āhualoa differs from many other parts of Hawaii in that it was never used for either cattle

Cattle

Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius...

 ranch

Ranch

A ranch is an area of landscape, including various structures, given primarily to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool. The word most often applies to livestock-raising operations in the western United States and Canada, though...

ing or sugarcane

Sugarcane

Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...

 plantation

Plantation

A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...

s. Instead, in the late 19th and early 20th century it was allocated to families of sugarcane workers as farm homesteads

Homesteading

Broadly defined, homesteading is a lifestyle of simple self-sufficiency.-Current practice:The term may apply to anyone who follows the back-to-the-land movement by adopting a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. While land is no longer freely available in most areas of the world, homesteading...

, and remains largely so today. The families, primarily Japanese

Japanese American

are American people of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity...

 and Portuguese

Portuguese American

Portuguese Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry originates in the southwest European nation of Portugal, including the offshore island groups of the Azores and Madeira....

 in ethnicity, were the first inhabitants of the area, and many of the present residents are descended from those families. The original native forest was cleared and replaced by a patchwork of pasture, farms and windbreaks.

In the 1970s, many countercultural

Counterculture of the 1960s

The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...

 families from Oahu

Oahu

Oahu or Oahu , known as "The Gathering Place", is the third largest of the Hawaiian Islands and most populous of the islands in the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital Honolulu is located on the southeast coast...

 and the mainland US moved to the Āhualoa area. They brought values and ideals of the back-to-the-land movement. A book of material gathered in 2003, Once Upon Ahualoa, explores the experience of this generation with memories and photographs.

Miscellaneous

Although the main road through Āhualoa has services (electricity, water, telephone), many residents living on side roads use rainwater tanks as a supply of water.

External links

• Ahualoa.net a site located in Ahualoa serving information about the community.