Kalaupapa National Historical Park

On the Kalaupapa Peninsula on Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi, this historic landscape preserves both a much older Native Hawaiian presence and the later settlements where people with Hansen’s disease were forcibly isolated from eighteen sixty-six to nineteen sixty-nine. Archaeological remains and historical accounts show centuries of habitation before European contact, but disease and government policy transformed the peninsula into a place of exile for about eight thousand five hundred people, fracturing families across Hawaiʻi. Caregivers including Father Damien, Mother Marianne Cope, Brother Joseph Dutton, and the Sisters of Saint Francis became central to its history. Today it remains both a nationally significant historic site and a small living community with limited public access.

Kaunakakai, Hawaii · United States