Exploring Historic Hilo (Small Town Series)
A Hilo history: New book shows bay town in photosHistoric Hilo's storied past is told in photos and anecdotes in the new bookExploring Historic Hiloby Leslie Lang. The volume is part of Watermark Publishing's "Small Town Series."Lang, a freelance writer from Pepeekeo who was once a frequent contributor to the Tribune-Herald, sought out photographs from sources such as the Hawaii State Archives, museums and private collections. She also interviewed several Hilo historians for the small coffee-table tome, which is reader-friendly, chock full of rarely-seen black-and-white photographs and easily-digestible nuggets of complementary information."It was a really fun project because I got to learn about the place that I live, and I thought it would be so interesting to just go back in time a little bit — and it really was." Lang said. "I see Hilo differently now when I drive through it. I come from the Hamakua Coast and I go over the 'Singing Bridge' and I look and I notice where the old railroad station used to be. I kind of have a picture of that now. I really do see the town differently and it is as fascinating as I thought it would be when I took on the project.""I vaguely knew before about how there had been shops and stores and buildings all along the makai side of Kamehameha Avenue, where we have Mooheau Park now. That had all been destroyed by tsunami and not rebuilt, which is why it looks so pretty in the way it is now. But I really didn't get it until I started seeing these pictures when I was gathering information and photos for the book." --John Burnett, "Hawaii Tribune-Herald" (copyright)