Molokaʻi
Molokaʻi or Molokai is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is at its greatest length and width with a usable land area of, making it the fifth largest in size of the main Hawaiian Islands and the 27th-largest island in the United States. It lies southeast of Oʻahu across the Kaʻiwi Channel and north of Lānaʻi, separated from it by the Kalohi Channel.
The island's agrarian economy has been driven primarily by cattle ranching, pineapple production, sugarcane production and small-scale farming. Tourism comprises a small fraction of the island's economy, and much of the infrastructure related to tourism was closed and barricaded in the early 2000s when the primary landowner, Molokai Ranch, ceased operations due to substantial revenue losses. In Kalawao County, on the Kalaupapa Peninsula on the north coast, settlements were established in 1866 for quarantined treatment of persons with leprosy; these operated until 1969. The Kalaupapa National Historical Park now preserves this entire county and area. Several other islands are visible from the shores of Molokaʻi, including Oʻahu from the west shores; Lānaʻi from the south shores, and Maui from the south and east shores.
Name
The island is known under several names by the local population: Molokaʻi ʻĀina Momona, Molokaʻi Pule Oʻo, and Molokaʻi Nui A Hina.Both the form Molokai and Molokai have long been used by native speakers of Hawaiian, and there is debate as to which is the original form, with conflicting claims as to which the elders used. The USGS and the Hawaiʻi Board on Geographic Names use the form with the ʻokina.
Geography
Molokaʻi developed from two distinct shield volcanoes known as East Molokaʻi and the much smaller West Molokaʻi. The highest point is Kamakou on East Molokaʻi, at. Today, East Molokaʻi volcano, like the Koʻolau Range on Oʻahu, is what remains of the southern half of the original mountain. The northern half suffered a catastrophic collapse about 1.5 million years ago and now lies as a debris field scattered northward across the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. What remains of the volcano on the island include the highest sea cliffs in the world. The south shore of Molokaʻi boasts the longest fringing reef in the U.S. and its holdings—nearly long.Molokaʻi is part of the state of Hawaii and located in Maui County, Hawaii, except for the Kalaupapa Peninsula, which is separately administered as Kalawao County. Maui County encompasses Maui, Lanai, and Kahoolawe in addition to Molokaʻi. The largest town on the island is Kaunakakai, which is one of two small ports on the island. Molokai Airport is located on the central plains of Molokaʻi.
The United States Census Bureau divides the island into three census tracts, Census Tract 317 and Census Tract 318 of Maui County and Census Tract 319 of Kalawao County. The total 2010 census population of these was 7,345, living on a land area of. Molokaʻi is separated from Oahu to the northwest by the Molokai Channel, from Maui to the southeast by the Pailolo Channel and from Lanai to the south by the Kalohi Channel.
The Kauhako Crater Lake is a soda lake.
Ecology
Molokaʻi is split into two main geographical areas. The low western half is very dry and the soil is heavily denuded due to poor land management practices, which allowed over-grazing by deer and goats. It lacks significant ground cover and virtually the entire section is covered in non-native kiawe trees. One of the few natural areas remaining almost intact are the coastal dunes of Moʻomomi, which are part of a Nature Conservancy preserve.The eastern half of the island is a high plateau rising up to an elevation of on Kamakou peak and includes the Molokai Forest Reserve. The eastern half is covered with lush wet forests that get more than of rain per year. The high-elevation forests are populated by native ʻōhiʻa lehua trees and an extremely diverse endemic flora and fauna in the understory. Much of the summit area is protected by the Nature Conservancy's Kamakou and Pelekunu valley preserves.
Below, the vegetation is dominated by introduced and invasive flora, including strawberry guava, eucalyptus, and cypress. Introduced axis deer and feral pigs roam native forests, destroying native plants, expanding spreading invasive plants through disturbance and distribution of their seeds, and threatening endemic insects. Near the summit of Kamakou is the unique Pēpēʻōpae bog, where dwarf ʻōhiʻa and other plants cover the soggy ground.
Molokaʻi is home to a great number of endemic plant and animal species. However, many of its species, including the olomaʻo, kākāwahie, and the Bishop's ‘ō‘ō have become extinct. Molokaʻi is home to a wingless fly among many other endemic insects.
History
It used to be thought that Molokaʻi was first settled around AD 650 by indigenous peoples most likely from the Marquesas Islands. However, a 2010 study using revised, high-precision radiocarbon dating based on more reliable samples has established that the period of eastern Polynesian colonization of the Marquesas Islands took place much later, in a shorter time frame of two waves: the "earliest in the Society Islands 1025–1120, four centuries later than previously assumed; then after 70 to 265 years, dispersal continued in one major pulse to all remaining islands 1190–1290." Later migrants likely came from Tahiti and other south Pacific islands.File:Molokai_Light_Moloka`i_,_HI_Light_House_-_Molokai_from_sea_-_Sailing_2011_Puanani_IMG_0769.jpg|thumb|U.S. Coast Guard Molokaʻi Light, Kalaupapa Peninsula, northern shore of Molokaʻi. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Although Captain James Cook recorded sighting Molokaʻi in 1778, the first European sailor to visit the island was Captain George Dixon of the British Royal Navy in 1786. The first significant European influence came in 1832 when a Protestant mission was established at Kaluaʻaha on the East End of the island by the Reverend Harvey Hitchcock. The first farmer on Molokaʻi to grow, produce and mill sugar and coffee commercially was Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer, an immigrant from Germany who arrived in 1850. He built the first and only sugar mill on the island in 1878, which is now a museum.
Ranching began on Molokaʻi in the first half of the 19th century when King Kamehameha V set up a country estate on the island, which was managed by Meyer and became what is now the Molokai Ranch. In the late 1800s, Kamehameha V built a vacation home in Kaunakakai and ordered the planting of over 1,000 coconut trees in Kapuaiwa Coconut Grove.
The Malaysian businessman, Quek Leng Chan, possesses one-third of Molokai Island, previously known for its leprosy settlement, via his conglomerate, Hong Leong Group. Quek managed a large ranch on the island, which included a golf course and a hotel, until 2008 when he ceased operations after the state denied his development requests; the residents of the island are now attempting to repurchase the property.
Leper colony
was introduced to the Hawaiian Islands by traders, sailors, workers and others who lived in societies where it was endemic. Sugar planters were worried about the effects on their labor force and pressured the government to take action to control the spread of leprosy.The legislature passed a control act requiring quarantine of people with leprosy. The government established Kalawao located on the isolated Kalaupapa peninsula on the northern side of Molokaʻi, followed by Kalaupapa as the sites of a leper colony that operated from 1866 to 1969. Because Kalaupapa had a better climate and sea access, it developed as the main community. A research hospital was developed at Kalawao. The population of these settlements reached a peak of 1,100 shortly after the beginning of the 20th century.
In total over the decades, more than 8,500 men, women and children living throughout the Hawaiian islands and diagnosed with leprosy were exiled to the colony by the Hawaiian government and declared legally dead. This public health measure was continued after the Kingdom became a U.S. territory. Patients were not allowed to leave the settlement nor have visitors and had to live out their days here.
Arthur Albert St. Mouritz served as a physician to the leper settlement from 1884 to 1887. He explained how leprosy was spread.
Pater Damiaan de Veuster, a Belgian priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary served as a missionary for 16 years in the communities of sufferers of leprosy. Joseph Dutton, who served in the 13th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1883, came to Molokaʻi in 1886 to help Father Damien and the rest of the population who suffered from leprosy. Father Damien died at Kalaupapa in 1889 while Joseph Dutton died in Honolulu in 1931 at the age of 87. Mother Marianne Cope of the Sisters of Saint Francis of Syracuse, New York, brought six of her Sisters to work in Hawaiʻi with leprosy sufferers in the late 19th century, also serving on Molokaʻi.
Both Father Damien and Mother Marianne have been canonized as Saints by the Roman Catholic Church for their charitable work and devotion to sufferers of leprosy. In December 2015, the cause of Joseph Dutton was formally opened, obtaining him the title Servant of God.
In the 1920s, people confined in the leper colony were treated with a new method devised by Alice Ball and involving chaulmoogra oil. In the 1940s, sulfonamide drugs were developed and provided a more effective treatment. Antibiotic Dapsone has been used for leprosy since 1945. Modern Multidrug therapy remains highly effective, and people are no longer infectious after the first monthly dose.
In 1969, the century-old laws of forced quarantine were abolished. Former patients living in Kalaupapa today have chosen to remain here, most for the rest of their lives. In the 21st century, there are no persons on the island with active cases of leprosy, which has been controlled through medication, but some former patients chose to continue to live in the settlement after its official closure.