Waimea Bay is world-famous, often touted as the breeding ground for modern-day big wave surfing with legends like Greg Noll taming wild surf, and still today, hosting the most prestigious surf contest in the game, The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.
And one aspect of Waimea sticks out – literally. Not the jump rock, which has its own history, dealing with sand being transported over to Waikiki. But rather, the church steeple that looms over the headland and the iconic, oversized waves breaking in the lineup.
But it wasn’t always a church – Mission of Saints Peter and Paul – as it is today. Below, dive back into the history of the building that every surfer on earth recognizes.
The narrator says: “This is without a doubt one of the most iconic landmarks at Waimea Bay. But it’s not what you think it is. At the end of the 1800s, there were trains that were going around taking sugar from plantations. But then, the cars started showing up, and they wanted to build a road. That’s where they started running into some problems.”
“All of a sudden, they ran out of stone to grind up into road. So, in the 1930s, this company came in and put in a stone mill. They would grind up stone and coral that would continue the road build out to Kahuku. Now, if you notice, at a certain point, they brought the roads together, where the train and the roads were side-by-side. Then, when the trains stopped running, that path ended up being the famous footpath that crosses the water from Waimea Valley.”
Related: Huge Landslide Slams Waimea Bay Amid Historic Hawaii Storm (Video)
Eventually, there was no more need for roads. So, what to do with the stone mill?
“Nothing was happening with it,” the narrator continues. “That’s when it caught the eye of the Catholic church in the 1950s. The church purchased the property, removed the machinery, and it’s now the church that we know today.”
The more you know.
Related: 100 Years Ago: Blast from the Past at Waimea Bay (Photos)
