Ala Kahakai · Trail by the Sea · Hawaiʻi Island
A concept preview of the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail — its ancient coastal path, the ahupuaʻa it crosses, and the marine sanctuary it borders.
The Hawaiian ahupuaʻa is a self-contained slice of land that holds everything a community needs: wao akua (the forest of the gods), wao kanaka (settled land), kahakai (the shore), and kai (the sea). The Ala Kahakai crosses more than 200 of them along Hawaiʻi Island's west and south coasts.
This site's eight chapters each profile one ahupuaʻa — what's mauka, what's makai, and what story the trail carries through it.
Seeing the trail in 360°
The National Park Service and USGS have built immersive 360° and 3D tours of the two park units on the trail — Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau and Puʻukoholā Heiau — and NOAA has a virtual dive of the sanctuary waters offshore. But the 175-mile corridor between and beyond them has no immersive record. That continuous coastline is what Terrain360 captures.
What Terrain360 capture looks like
Representative of the immersive capture Terrain360 would produce along the Ala Kahakai corridor.
The 8 chapters · north to south
The trail, the sanctuary, and the ahupuaʻa boundaries are real and public-record. The chapters are scaffolds — full content arrives after consultation with named cultural reviewers (see the methodology page).
Built by Terrain360 as a labor-of-love demonstration of what a partnership with NPS could look like.
On partnership signal from the NPS Ala Kahakai NHT team or the Partnership for the National Trails System, this same site flips to its operational form: indexed, reviewed by the named partners, and continuously updated with field captures and partner stories.
The structure stays the same — only the badge, the reviewers, and the index policy change.
