Kalākaua's Gift: A Walk Through Kapiʻolani Park

Kapiʻolani Park

The oldest public park in Hawaiʻi, given by King Kalākaua in 1877, a wide green plain under the gaze of Lēʻahi.

You're standing in Kapiʻolani Park, on the flat plain at the foot of Lēʻahi, the volcanic cone the British named Diamond Head. King David Kalākaua dedicated this land to the people of Hawaiʻi on June 11, 1877, Kamehameha Day. It was the kingdom's first public park, and the day began with horse races on an oval track that once ran through here. Kalākaua loved the ponies, and he wanted a dry course where winter rains wouldn't cancel the card.

Look up. The wide, umbrella-shaped canopies above you are monkeypod trees, planted in the park's early decades. Their wood came from South America. The thick, ropy trunks belong to banyans, which drop aerial roots that thicken into new trunks over time.

A single banyan can spread wider than a city block. The queen the park is named for, Kapiʻolani, was Kalākaua's wife. Her motto was 'Kūlia i ka nuʻu,' strive for the highest. A bronze statue of her stands near the bandstand, which is your next stop.

Walk toward Kalākaua Avenue, keeping the mountain on your left.

Kapiʻolani Park Bandstand

A white octagonal bandstand from the early 1900s, still hosting Royal Hawaiian Band concerts on Sunday afternoons.

This white octagonal bandstand has been here since the early 1900s. It was built during a wave of park-bandstand construction across the United States, when a Sunday concert in the park was still a neighborhood's main event. The Royal Hawaiian Band, founded in 1836 by King Kamehameha III, still plays here on Sunday afternoons. If you hear brass drifting across the lawn, you've timed it right.

The bandstand sits near the park's western edge, close to where the old horse-racing oval used to turn. In the 1880s you'd have heard hoofbeats and the crack of the starting pistol from this spot. Today it's joggers and picnickers and the occasional wedding. Behind you, across Kalākaua Avenue, Waikīkī's hotel strip rises, a world away from the park Kalākaua imagined.

The bronze statue of Queen Kapiʻolani stands a short walk east of here. When you're ready, head toward the mountain side of the park, where the zoo entrance waits under its own monkeypod canopy.

Honolulu Zoo

The only American zoo born from a monarch's grant, tracing its roots to King Kalākaua's private bird collection.

The Honolulu Zoo is the only zoo in the United States that began with a king's gift. Kalākaua kept his private collection of exotic birds here on the royal grounds. After his death in 1891, the birds stayed. In 1914 the city's first park director, Ben Hollinger, started adding animals: a monkey, a sun bear, and in 1916 an African elephant named Daisy, bought off a steamship passing through from Australia.

Daisy lived here until 1933 and became the zoo's first celebrity. The zoo was officially established in 1947 on forty-two acres of the park. Today its exhibits are arranged by tropical zone: an African savanna, an Asian and American tropical forest, and a Pacific Islands section with native Hawaiian species. The entrance you're facing, on Kapahulu Avenue, was rebuilt in the 1990s with lava-rock walls and the deep shade of monkeypod trees.

You don't need to go inside unless you'd like to. Our walk continues along the park's ocean side. Follow the path toward the shoreline; the aquarium is about ten minutes on foot.