Black History Month tends to focus on people and events on the continent. But did you know the 30-mile Mauna Loa Trail that stretches from the summit of Kīlauea to the summit of Maunaloa was built in 39 days by African American soldiers in 1915?
They belonged to one of four military regiments made up of Black troops, known as Buffalo Soldiers. The name came from the Plains Indians who thought their dark curly hair resembled a buffalo’s coat — and because of their fierce style of fighting.
The 25th Infantry Regiment was assigned to Schofield Barracks on Oʻahu in 1913, right before World War I. The unit had already fought in the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War in Cuba, and the Philippine-American War.
Once in Honolulu, they became a popular group for their baseball and athleticism, said Martha Hoverson, a Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park Library volunteer and a retired local librarian.
She wrote a paper on the trail project, "Buffalo Soldiers at Kīlauea, 1915-1917."
The idea for the trail primarily came from Thomas Jaggar, the head of Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory. He wanted better access to the nearly 13,700-foot summit of Maunaloa, which was erupting regularly at the time.
"They used the old boy network to contact folks at Schofield, the commanders, and, you know, 'Hey, could you send some boys over here to build this trail?' That tended to be how things got done, I think, in Hawaiʻi at the time," Hoverson said.
Schofield training consisted of marching and drilling, so when the chance arose for an assignment on Hawai‘i Island, the company commanders jumped at it, sending E Company "as part of their vacation exercises." Hoverson wrote that, altogether, about 140 soldiers and their officers left Oʻahu to build the trail.
"Basically, what they were doing in the trail building itself was using hammers to beat down the lava. So if it was ʻaʻā lava, they would smooth it a little bit and they would use the rubble that they'd created by knocking the rocks down to line portions of the trail... probably the harder surface to work on was the pāhoehoe," Hoverson said.
The soldiers' only tools were sledgehammers and gunny sacks. They did not use pack animals — in fact, Hoverson wrote that their job was to make the trail passable for animals.
"I think that the altitude and the weather were probably their biggest challenges, and it's not like these guys weren't used to hard work," she told The Conversation.
She said they built the trail up to 10,000 feet, but beyond that, they marked the trail. Although it had been thought that the soldiers would be able to build the rest house at 10,000 feet, now known as Red Hill Cabin, it was instead built by a contractor from Hilo.
Other companies of the 25th Infantry Regiment helped Jaggar with investigations at Kīlauea, visited Kilauea Military Camp, and were assigned to guard Hilo.
The National Park Service released a new short film about the soldiers, “Forging a Path with a 12-Pound Hammer.”
This interview aired on The Conversation on Feb. 22, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Sophia McCullough adapted this story for the web.
