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The shape of things

Viewed on a map, Oahu is shaped like a lumpy trapezoid whose “left” (west) side is far shorter than its “right” (east) side. It’s made up of two extinct volcanoes whose original shapes must have been much more oval than circular. Now, all that’s left is one long wall of each volcano and the plateau that formed between them. The remnant of the older volcano, looking like a short chain of mountains, is called the Waianae Range and it defines the shorter west side of the island. The volcano’s crater probably lay where the Lualualei and Waianae valleys are now. The remnant of the younger volcano, looking like a long chain of mountains, is called the Koolau Range and it defines the longer northeast side of the island. Its crater lays near present-day Kaneohe and Kailua. When they were both younger, material from the Koolau volcano built up against the Waianae volcano to form the inland plain between them, the Schofield Plateau.

Oahu was never politically dominant in old Hawaii. Hawaii and Maui were far more important then. Today’s Oahu owes its preeminence to a unique feature on its south (“bottom”) edge: the three deep lochs of Pearl Harbor, one of the Pacific’s finest harbors. The lochs are actually river valleys, gouged out when the sea level was much lower during the last Ice Age. They subsequently drowned when the world warmed, the great ice sheets melted, and sea level rose. Native Hawaiian canoes needed no such harbor, but European ships did. As Europeans and their trade came to dominate Hawaii’s everyday life, Hawaii’s political and economic life shifted to Oahu and Pearl Harbor.