Tower and outbuildings at Cape Kumukahi Photograph courtesy Liane Pestrella

The Lighthouse Board made its first request for a lighthouse at Cape Kumukahi in 1908, backed by the following justification.

There is at present no landfall light for vessels bound to Hawai`i by way of Cape Horn. Several vessels have within recent years gone ashore on Kumukahi Point. This is the first land sighted by the vessels from the southward and eastward. The shipping from these directions now merits consideration, and with the improvement of business at Hilo and the opening of the Panama Canal, the necessity for a landfall light on this cape grows more urgent.

Finally, on December 31, 1928, the U.S. Government purchased fifty-eight acres on Cape Kumukahi from the Hawaiian Trust Company for the sum of $500. During the following year, a thirty-two-foot wooden tower capped with an automatic acetylene gas light was built at the cape - not exactly the powerful landfall light the Lighthouse Board had envisioned years before.

In 1933, a sufficient appropriation was at last made for a primary seacoast light for Cape Kumukahi. Two five-room dwellings, water tanks, sidewalks, and a reinforced concrete foundation for the tower were built that year. Due to the frequent earthquakes associated with volcanic activity in the area, a unique foundation was designed for the tower. Lava was first excavated and a massive concrete block was installed in the resulting hole. A second concrete block was placed above the first with a thick layer of sand in between. This design allowed the lower block to move with the earth, without transmitting shocks to the tower. The following year, a square, pyramidal, skeleton tower was constructed of steel, and an aerobeacon was placed at its top, 125 feet above the ground. The light's first head keeper was Charles K. Akana, assisted by William J. Watkins.

In 1938, Joe Pestrella was transferred from the lighthouse tender Kukui to Cape Kumukahi. When he arrived, the station was completely barren. On his own time and at his own expense, he brought in soil and trees and succeeded in turning a desolate spot into a place of beauty. Included in his orchard were lemon, mango and tangerine trees.

Keepers quarters at Cape Kumukahi Photograph courtesy Liane Pestrella

Cape Kumukahi is included in Kilauea Volcano's active east rift zone. In 1955, a lava flow threatened the station but Pestrella remained on duty. For his dedicated years of service at the station, he was selected as Civil Servant of the Year for the Hawai`i area in 1956.

On January 13, 1960, a fiery fountain of lava, roughly half a mile long, shot up in a sugar cane field, two miles east of the lighthouse and just north of the town of Kapoho. Bulldozers and fire hoses were used in attempts to divert and harden the flow. On January 21, the flow appeared to be heading north away from the village and the station. However, during the next week, the lava turned south and started to encroach on the station grounds. Pestrella's wife and infant son were evacuated, but Pestrella remained at the station saying, "When my backside feels hot, I'll move on. Not till then!!".

When the lava set the station's gate ablaze, Pestrella surely felt the heat, and he placed the light on emergency power and left the station on January 28. The lava flow swallowed the keepers' dwellings, which were located three-fifths of a mile from the light, and incinerated Pestrella's orchard. That same day, the flow engulfed the town of Kapoho.

On February 2, the heat from the flow caused the generator's fuel tanks at the tower to explode and the light was extinguished. As the river of lava approached within a few feet of the tower, it remarkably divided into two streams that flowed past each side of the structure, leaving the tower unscathed. The Kapoho eruption had covered over 10 square kilometers and added two square kilometers of land to the island.

A ten-ton lighted buoy was anchored 510 yards off the cape to temporarily serve as the Cape Kumukahi navigational aid until Hilo Electric Company was able to string power lines to the light from the Kapoho Beach lots. After surviving the lava flow, the lighthouse was fully automated and Pestrella was transferred to the Makapu`u Lighthouse on O`ahu.

Mahalo to Liane Pestrella, granddaughter of Keeper Joe Pestrella, for providing historic photographs and documents.

Head Keeper: Charles K. Akana (1934), Fredrick E. Nihoa (1937 – 1942), Joseph Pestrella (1942 – 1960).

Photo Gallery: 1

References

1. The Lighthouses of Hawai`i, Love Dean, 1986.