Waimea - Menehune Ditch

Immediately in front of the Hawaiian Church, Menehune Road bears left, ending at the famous Menehune Ditch, or what remains of it. The ditch is considered the master work of these ancient peoples because they employed a building style not seen anywhere else in the Hawaiian archipelago - here and only here polished and cut stones are found. Today, only about 66ft/20m of the upper part of the ditch can be seen, as many stones were hacked out for use in building roads and houses.

When George Vancouver landed in Waimea in 1793, he described the wall of the ditch as projecting almost 26ft/8m out of the river and mentioned that it served as a tributary of Waimea River and, as such, must have been quite long. Today nothing is to be seen of it. According to his description, the uncut rock came from a quarry 7.5mi/12km away. It remains unknown how it was transported, for the Hawaiians had no knowledge of the wheel at that stage. No wonder the Menehune had problems explaining this piece of building work. In Hawaiian, it is called kiki ola, Ola's Waterfall (Ola was one of Kauai's principal chieftains).