History
The 1790 Footprints near Kīlauea on Hawaiʻi Island are impressions left in hardened volcanic ash during an unusually explosive eruption in 1790, amid the wars that reshaped power on the island. Traditional accounts connect them to Keōua Kuahuʻula’s warriors, who passed Kīlauea, made offerings to Pele, and were overtaken in the Kaʻū Desert after their group split as the eruption intensified. Early geologist Thomas Jaggar linked the prints to those killed in that disaster. Later found by Ruy H. Finch in 1919, the site came to be protected and is valued as rare evidence of people caught in a volcanic catastrophe and as a meeting point of geology, warfare, and Hawaiian memory.
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Mauna Loa Estates, Hawaii · United States
