Kalawao is a location on the eastern side of the Kalaupapa Peninsula of the island of Molokai, in Hawaii, which was the site of Hawaii's leper colony between 1866 and the early 20th century. Thousands of people in total came to the island to live in quarantine. It was one of two such settlements on Molokai, the other being Kalaupapa. Administratively Kalawao is part of Kalawao County. The placename means "mountain-side wild woods" in Hawaiian.
After the colony was established in 1866 by the legislature, with the intention of preventing the transmission of leprosy to others, a hospital, two churches and a number of homes were built here. Father Damien, a Belgian Catholic missionary, came to the island in 1873 to serve the lepers. In 1886 Brother Joseph Dutton went to the colony to aid the dying Father Damien. After Father Damien's death Dutton founded the Baldwin Home for Men and Boys in Kalawao. In the early 1900s the Hawaii Board of Health began relocating patients to Kalaupapa, the settlement on the western side of the peninsula. Its climate was warmer and drier, and access by sea was easier. A hospital complex was built at Kalawao to conduct research into Hansen's disease, and from 1909 to 1913 the US Leprosy Investigation Station was operated there. When that facility was closed, the settlement was abandoned in favor of Kalaupapa on the western side of the peninsula, about 3 miles away.
Source: Wikipedia.org
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