Where was the Waikiki Dairy? Not in Waikiki, or even Hawaii for that matter. It was in Spokane, Wash. Why is there a Manoa Shopping Center in Pennsylvania? Why is there a town in Oregon named Aloha? And why do they pronounce it “A-lo-ah”?
For a tiny speck of land in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, Hawaii seems to have a larger influence than one might think.
Many places on the mainland have been named for places in Hawaii. A few years ago I wrote about a Diamondhead, Miss. Here are some others I find interesting.
Honolulu House in Michigan
Peter von Buol, a journalist from Chicago who often writes about Hawaii, was in Honolulu last week. He told me something I had never heard before: A man named Abner Pratt built a home in Michigan that was based on the original Iolani Palace! He called it Honolulu House.
Pratt was the U.S. consul to Honolulu from 1857 to 1860. His chief responsibility was to provide for the care of sick or injured U.S. seamen during Hawaii’s whaling days.
His hometown was Marshall, Mich., which is about 40 miles south of Lansing and 100 miles west of Detroit.
After he returned home to Marshall, Pratt had nostalgic feelings for Hawaii. He built a home, based on the original Iolani Palace, for $20,000.
The original Iolani Palace was within 100 feet of the present palace.
It was a one-story, Western-looking home. It was built in 1845 and demolished in 1879. King Kalakaua erected the current palace in 1882.
Pratt’s Honolulu House featured a wide Hawaii-style lanai and decorative railings.
The Marshall Historical Society says, “The house is of true tropical architecture — fifteen-foot ceilings, ten-foot doors, long, open galleries with the dining room and kitchen on the ground level.
“A circular freestanding staircase rises from the lower level to an observation platform more than thirty feet above. The walls in the interior of the house were painted to depict scenes from the islands.”
Waikiki Dairy
Bishop Museum Collections Manager DeSoto Brown told me recently that there was once a Waikiki Dairy … in Spokane, Wash. It was founded in 1904 by Jay Graves, who had visited Waikiki. He thought it was the most beautiful place on earth.
Since Waikiki means “spouting water” and his ranch had 24 natural springs on the property, he thought the name was appropriate.
Some of what was Grave’s 1,000-acre cattle and dairy ranch is owned by Gonzaga University today.
Manoa, Pa.
Dolores Treffeisen wrote, “There is a town right outside of Philadelphia named Manoa, and there is a Manoa Road there, also.
“In Manoa, Pa., you can shop at the Manoa Shopping Center. There’s also a Manoa Flowers, Manoa Dry Cleaning and Manoa Tavern.”
Bob Krauss wrote about it in The Honolulu Advertiser in 1987. Manoa, Pa., was named by Samuel Moore, who made a trip to Hawaii back when his home was surrounded by farms.
“Moore owned a general store that sold everything from pins to Model-T Fords. After he returned home, Moore called his establishment the Manoa Store. His store was also the post office.
“People began mailing letters to Manoa, Pa. This would have worked fine except that hardly anybody in Pennsylvania could spell Manoa correctly. The postal service finally gave up in disgust. Manoa’s address was changed to Haverford.
“But the name stuck and is still on road maps. Natalie Smith, associate editor of the local weekly, News of Delaware County, said Manoa is a middle- to upper-middle-class neighborhood of people who mostly work in Philadelphia, about 8 miles away.”
It’s similar to driving downtown from Hawaii Kai, Krauss suggested.
“Manoa, Pa., has an East Manoa Road just like Manoa Valley in Hawaii. But nobody there ever heard of Manoa lettuce or Manoa Cemetery.”
Honolulu, N.C.
Toby Kravet said there is a town named Honolulu in North Carolina. It’s a little bit smaller than Honolulu, Hawaii, and has a population of nine. We have 900,000.
Craig Gima of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin wrote in 2002 that the hamlet got its name in 1900 when James Witherington set up a post office there.
“They asked what he wanted to call it, and on the spur of the moment, he said, ‘We’ll just call it Honolulu,’” his granddaughter Shelba Witherington said.
“No one in the family has ever been to Hawaii,” Witherington said. The family has no idea why James Witherington picked it.
There are a few other unusual names nearby. Twenty miles from Honolulu, N.C., is a town called California. North Carolina also has towns named Surf City and Sunset Beach.
Bruce Graham said the confusion between the two Honolulus helped him save money on his phone bill 50 years ago when long-distance phone “toll” calls were costly.
“In 1971, on spring break from law school at the University of Virginia, my roommate and I drove to his home in Montgomery, Ala., joined friends in New Orleans and then drove back through Atlanta.
“We spent Saturday night in Atlanta. Sunday was Easter, and I decided to call my mother and dad in Honolulu (Hawaii), where I was born and raised. In those days long-distance calls required the assistance of an operator.
“I told the operator I wanted to call Honolulu and gave her the home number. The operator tried the number and told me it was not in service. I asked that she try again. Same result. She asked if I had the right number.
“Frustrated, I said, ‘The area code is 808 and the …’ She interrupted me, saying she knew the area code.
“This time, the call went through, and I had a long conversation with my family, relating the whole trip from Charlottesville through the South. I expected a huge bill.”
When the telephone bill came the following month, Graham said the charge was only a couple of dollars.
“I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was billed for a call from Atlanta to Honolulu, N.C., a little over 400 miles away. I had never heard of Honolulu, N.C., but was glad it was there.
“Plainly, the operator had not corrected the ticket when she made the third try. Or maybe it was an Easter present from her.”
Aloha, Ore.
Les Chibana said, “I’ve lived near Portland, Ore., for around 12 years. At my last job, one of the customers and I were talking about where we came from.
“She was from Aloha, Ore., but she was adamant that it was pronounced ‘a-lo-ah’ and was not a Hawaiian word.
“I was amused because I’ve driven by Aloha High School, and the gym was decorated with a large likeness of a Hawaiian-appearing king with feathered headdress, and their mascot’s name is the Warriors.”
Marty Smith, writing in Willamette Week magazine, says the town of Aloha is pronounced locally so as to rhyme, more or less, with “Samoa.”
The nephew of Aloha’s first postmaster says that in 1912 his uncle named the post office from the Aloah Beach resort on Wisconsin’s Lake Winnebago.
“According to the story, the post office then garbled the spelling — ‘Aloha’ instead of ‘Aloah’ — but the original pronunciation still survives,” Smith says. “It’s a pretty thin reed, I admit, but I’m grabbing it.”
I went searching for “Aloah Beach” or “Aloha Beach” on Lake Winnebago and found both spellings in Wisconsin newspapers dating from 1894.
The Appleton Post says the resort took that name from a “ditty” (song) that was a favorite of “Princess Kappiolani.” The description, however fits Princess Kaiulani. The unnamed resort owner said it meant “friendly” or “welcome.”
The article said the name of this new resort on Lake Winnebago is “suggestive of a hearty welcome and of a dreamy, semi-tropical restfulness awaiting the tired toiler who is fortunate enough to be permitted to pass a period of leisure within its bounds.”
The paper quotes the “ditty” as:
“The winds that blow over the sea,
Sing softly ‘Aloha’ to me.
The waves, as they break on the sand,
Sing ‘Aloah!’ and bid me land.”
Did you see that? It uses both “Aloha” and “Aloah.” If a town in Oregon took its name from that newspaper article, that could be the source of the confusion.
The song was written by J.D. Redding (1858-1932) as “The Winds From Over the Sea.”
In January 1894 the song’s lyrics ran in the Saint Joseph (Mo.) Gazette. It spelled “Aloha” only one way. The misspelling of Aloah appears to have been the Appleton Post’s error.
One last thing: 99% of the time, Wisconsin papers refer it as “Aloha Beach,” not “Aloah Beach.”
My conclusion is that the town in Oregon picked up on that confusion when they pronounced “Aloha” as “Aloah.”
Readers, what do you think? This list barely scratches the surface of mainland places with Hawaiian names. If you know of some, let me know.
———
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.
