Waipahe‘e Slide is a naturally created, rock water chute, about 30 feet in length, with a downward angle of some 45 degrees, located on Kealia Stream within Kaua‘i’s 6,500-acre Kealia Ahupua‘a, roughly three miles west of the Spalding Monument.
My first visit to Waipahe‘e to slide down its chute into the 15-foot-deep pool below for fun occurred in May 1968 with my fiancée, Ginger Beralas of Lihu‘e.
She’d ridden the slide and had swum in its pool many times before as a teenager with her girlfriends.
Near the slide the girls would pick flowers from a white ginger patch and affix them behind their left ears.
They’d then stroll to the slide, where fascinated tourists standing by would hear their laughter and watch them speed down the slide, splash into the pool and swim.
Generations of locals like themselves, as well as visitors to Kaua‘i, had enjoyed free access to the Waipahe‘e Slide until 1979, when property owner Lihu‘e Plantation officially declared it unsafe, closed it to the public, erected gates and ceased maintaining its access road.
That action was taken because 10 people had drowned at the Waipahe‘e Slide between 1944 and 1979 in the strong whirlpool that forms within its pool during times of heavy rain.
After the McCloskey family, its present owners, purchased the Kealia Ahupua‘a from Lihu‘e Plantation in 2000, which included access to the slide, it remained closed to the public.
Looking further back in history, we see that the Hawaiian government had sold Ernest Krull property within the Kealia Ahupua‘a for $200 in 1854, which extended westward from the location of where the Spalding Monument would later be built in 1930 to the vicinity of the Waipahe‘e Slide.
Then in 1866, Krull enlarged his holdings by buying the remainder of the Kealia Ahupua‘a from Levi Ha‘alelea for $3,100.
Ten years later, in 1876, Capt. James Makee and Col. Zephaniah Spalding founded Makee Sugar Co. by acquiring the Kealia Ahupua‘a from Krull for $30,000.
In 1933, Lihu‘e Plantation acquired Makee Sugar Co. and held possession of the Kealia Ahupua‘a and its slide until its sale to the McCloskeys.
•••
Hank Soboleski has been a resident of Kauai since the 1960s. Hank’s love of the island and its history has inspired him, in conjunction with The Garden Island Newspaper, to share the island’s history weekly. The collection of these articles can be found here: https://bit.ly/2IfbxL9 and here https://bit.ly/2STw9gi Hank can be reached at hssgms@gmail.com
