Just when I think that we’ve located all the old photos in my parents’ home, along come some more. Yesterday my sister handed me an old shoe box with a jumble of things inside. Lens caps to long lost cameras. Empty Kodak 35mm film cans. Empty slide boxes. Then some gems. A few stacks of loose slides held in place by disintegrating rubber bands, along with several boxes as they would have been returned after being developed. Most of the slides carefully labeled in my mother’s careful handwriting. They were mixed up, products of several different trips to neighbor islands.

In a quick look yesterday afternoon, I pulled out a handful images from a family vacation Maui in mid-August 1960, several days on either side of my birthday, which falls on the 17th. These slides are 53 years old, and show their age. But the images still capture that earlier point of island history.

These were taken in the area of South Maui now site of the sprawling resorts and condominiums stretching from Wailea towards Makena. At that time, though, South Kihei Road was the end of the line. Beyond, towards Makena, it was pretty much a desert.

There are several photos of the Henry Baldwin home on Keawakapu Beach, and views from the beach, now in the middle of the Wailea resort area.

Wailea wasn’t conceived by the folks at Alexander and Baldwin for more than another decade.

One personal treasure–a photo at the Baldwin house in which I’m holding a large, orange cat. I was just turning 13 at the time. I don’t remember the incident or the cat, but it’s my earliest recorded feline interaction. Perhaps it had an effect?

–> See all of these photos of Keawakapu Beach in 1960