But while many think of the increased interest in a localicious movement as something born over the past two decades or so, Native Hawaiians were keenly aware of the relationship between longevity and their lands. Travel just a short distance from central Honolulu to O‘ahu’s Windward side and you’ll find evidence of ancient sustainable agriculture and ingenious fishing practices. At Kualoa Ranch, a 4,000-acre stretch of land dominated by high peaked mountains and spectacular coastline, there’s been sustainability and respect for the land for centuries.

For Hawaiians, Kualoa was one of the most cherished and sacred places on O‘ahu. A training ground for Hawaiian royalty, home to Hawaiian kings, and a place of refuge, Kualoa was revered as a magical place steeped in spiritual and agricultural history. With its stunning high ridge (Kualoa means “Long Back” in Hawaiian), lush green valleys and impressive mountain peaks, the ranch is home to, among other things, a herd of Angus-cross cattle, and deep into the valley of the ranch, centuries-old Hawaiian fishpond has been nurtured back to health by the breeding of some of the freshest tasting oysters in the world.

Ironically, Kualoa Ranch is known to millions as the Hollywood backdrop to movies and television shows like Jurassic Park and LOST, It’s also known as a place of adventure where zip line tours take guests deep into the trails and high above sheltered coastlines. But this connection between ancestors and the ‘aina, the ancient and the modern, is the driving force behind the farming methods at this impressive center of local agriculture.

With all-natural grass-fed beef, farm-raised shrimp, and free-range eggs, Kualoa Ranch quietly has established itself as a significant player in the sustainable food movement, and no better evidence can be found than in oysters farmed in the 800-year-old Moli‘i fishpond, where the ingenious methods first applied by Hawaiians have been revitalized with spectacular results. A 4,000-foot-long wall, constructed 800 years ago, isolates the pond’s body of water from the ocean. A freshwater source from the mountains flows into the pond, and the result is an estuarine environment that promotes a single cell algae bloom and a near-perfect environment, it seems, for oysters.

Maintaining the ancient fishpond and farming the oysters that flourish there is something oyster maiden Ku‘uipo McCartey takes very seriously.

“I feel that I am taking care of one of the most beautiful fishponds in Hawai‘i,” she says enthusiastically. “It’s something that we all take very seriously at Kualoa.”

I feel that I am taking care of one of the most beautiful fishponds in Hawai‘i

Ku‘uipo McCartey

Originally imported to feed on excess algae in the pond and maintain the health of the water, Kualoa oysters have become some of the most sought-after mollusks in Hawai‘I — with demand for the sweet, briny, Pacific triploids far exceeding supply.

Hawai‘i’s top chefs and restaurateurs, including Alan Wong (Alan Wong’s Restaurants) and Ed Kenney (Town, Mud Hen Water, Mahina, and Sons) clamor to serve the sweet-tasting oysters and marvel at their flavor. Similar to grapes that rely on terroir for their flavor, oysters, rely on “merroir,” explains McCartey, adding that a Kualoa Oyster will have a clean, fresh opening flavor and a sweet, almost briny aftertaste. The slight saltiness is due to a meticulous 48-hour purging process that results in succulent, clean, fresh oysters meticulously freed from grit or dirt.

Freshness is important when you live on an island, and essential if you’re part of an agricultural movement that provides all-natural grass-fed beef to a well-educated consumer who knows about the benefits of better beef. Much like the oysters, Kualoa’s high-quality, fresh meats are in high demand.

Ryan Schultz is Kualoa’s livestock manager. A third-generation rancher, he was born and raised on Hawai‘i island at his family’s Daleico Ranch, learning his trade from his father and his grandfather. In keeping with the ancient tradition that flows through Kualoa history, Schultz takes his responsibility for the land and the cattle seriously. He speaks of the strength of a legacy in farming. “I felt a sense of family obligation to continue what my grandfather started,” he says.

More than 600 cattle graze on almost 2,000 acres of stunning pasture, allowing Schultz and his team at Kualoa to manage both the grasslands and the herd, which consists of breeding cows, calves, steers, and bulls—all of them raised without steroids, hormones or antibiotics. And because the beef is processed on the island, there’s no fresher meat on the market.

“We literbally have the freshest, all-natural beef you can possibly find in Hawai’I

Ryan Schultz, Kualoa Livestock Manager

“Everything that’s harvested from the ranch is marketed directly back to the consumer in the least amount of time.”

Between gentle grazing habits and a quick harvest time, Kualoa Beef sets the bar for locally farmed meats. Currently, the ranch is the only wholesaler of its products, and faithful consumers place orders weekly on the ranch website, choosing from cuts of meat that include rib eye, tenderloin, New York steak, top sirloin roast, chuck steak, flank steak, short ribs, beef stew cut and ground beef. The ranch even marinates its own teriyaki beef and barbecue-style ribs. “Local people know that our beef is the freshest they can find,” Schultz explains. “And it’s important to them that the cattle never leave the island.”

It still may be shrouded in ancient history and revered as a sacred space, but Kualoa Ranch, under the stewardship of the Morgan family and its committed staff, is as relevant today as it was centuries ago.

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Waikiki in the 1800s: It was a soggy, mosquito-laden marshland of fishponds, taro patches and coconut groves. It was not the solid ground fit for skyscrapers and resorts that we know it for today. All that would come later. Early Waikiki, for the native Hawaiians and the Polynesian explorers before them, was revered for its healing waters, or kawehewehe— a Hawaiian word that translates to “the opening up.”

Today, Waikiki is the heart and soul of Hawai‘i’s tourism industry, a Vegas in the Pacific responsible for 21 percent of
Hawai‘i’s entire economy. But the earliest inhabitants of this beautiful, isolated paradise long understood this stretch of southern shoreline’s aesthetic and spiritual value — as long as humans have bore witness to it, Waikiki has been the place to be.

And so it was for Robert Lewers, an early Honolulu lumber merchant and philanthropist who built a two-story home on Gray’s Beach in 1838. “Uncle Robert,” as he was known, was a “link for years between that glamorous early Hawai‘i with its monarchial pomp and court ceremony and the thriving business community Hawai‘i became under American jurisdiction,” wrote the Honolulu Star-Bulletin at his death in 1924. He didn’t care about the political affairs of the land or the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, he cared about business and family.

Lewers soon offered the house to fishermen to dock and rest, and in 1907, leased it to local journalist, Edward Irwin, who officially considered it the Hau Tree hotel—it consisted of the beachfront home and five bungalows (21 rooms for about 40 people). When that lease expired 10 years later, Juliet and Clifford Kimball took it over and gave it a name, but the locals had already done that years before: They called it Halekulani, or “house befitting heaven.”

Back then, amidst the duck ponds and solitude (after all, Waikiki was four miles away from the sea-port of Honolulu and its bustling whalers harbor), visitors would ride the train into Waikiki and get off near their hotels, or perhaps they brought their own Model T—mainland visitors sailed to Hawai‘i on giant luxury ocean liners, sometimes bringing along their own cars and staff. One wonders what the Granthams of “Downton Abbey” would have thought if they ever traveled as far west as Hawai‘i; chances are they would have stayed at Halekulani.

It was also in the ’20s when Earl Derr Biggers stayed (and then was stranded during WWI) at the house next to Halekulani, when it was called Gray’s Hotel. There, he wrote the book that would introduce the Honolulu detective Charlie Chan to the world, House Without A Key, which was first published in 1925.

By the ’30s, the Kimballs had established a solid reputation as having a fine hotel in a beautiful land.

They’d expanded by acquiring the adjacent Gray’s-By-The-Sea and the Arthur Brown home (where present-day House Without A Key is now), but even paradise couldn’t escape the long, shriveling reach of the Great Depression.

In the late ’30s, Hawai‘i was dependent on the money spent from mainland visitors, much like it is today. If the mainland was hard for cash, so was Hawai‘i. But wealthy travelers, made of old money, still came across the seas, and Halekulani’s reputation of providing the finest service reached deep into those circles of society and carried it through into, well, at least until war hit the islands a few years later.

What were once festive streets filled with wide-eyed, weary and sunburned tourists before December 7 quickly became darkened under martial law every night within five months after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Photographs in a May 1942 issue of Life Magazine show the once-glistening Aloha Tower extinguished under the nightly blackout.

Wartime in Hawai‘i immediately brought with it years of martial law, curfews and tire rations; beaches were fenced in barbed wire for fear of invasion from the sea. Sandbags were piled in front of important buildings, such as Honolulu City Hall, and residents were required all to wear gas masks (even the keiki at school). Anyone who broke the law would be tried in military court, and fines could be paid in blood to the Red Cross.

The influx of military personnel to an island not

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