Lionel Walden, 1915
(Wikimedia CC; click to enlarge)
In pre-contact times, Laie was a sanctuary for fugitives. In 1865, the area was purchased by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a “gathering place” for Hawaiian Mormons. President Joseph F. Smith dedicated the site for a temple in Laie in 1915; President Heber J. Grant dedicated that temple in 1919. President David O. McKay founded what is now Brigham Young University’s Hawaii campus adjacent to the temple in 1955. (Matthew Bowen teaches at BYU-Hawaii.) In 1963, the Polynesian Cultural Center, an open-air cultural museum that has since become one of the major tourist attractions in Hawaii, was established on Church-owned land directly beside BYU-Hawaii in an effort to provide employment for students and to preserve the Polynesian cultures from which many of them came.
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