These shores were the heart of ʻEwa, a moku (district) counted among the political centers of Oʻahu before Kamehameha. Puʻuloa was its larder. Observers of old Hawaiʻi judged these bays the most favorable in all the islands for building loko iʻa, the walled coastal fishponds in which Hawaiians raised fish on a scale found almost nowhere else; people had tended them here since at least the mid-1400s. Shrimp, shellfish, and penned fish came out of Puʻuloa in steady abundance, and the families of ʻEwa built a settled, well-fed life around the harbor's quiet lochs.
Today the harbor anchors a living community. Pearl City and ʻAiea climb the slopes above the East Loch, the old ʻEwa lands still carry families who have called these shores home for generations, and the name Puʻuloa belongs first to a Hawaiian place — a garland of harbors, the waters of pearl — long before it belonged to history. Our designs carry that older, deeper name with pride.
