Kamuela, Hawaii - Kamuela Museum - Moldy Taxidermy

Just wanted to note that the Kamuela Museum is closed. You can still drive by it -- there is a hard to see sign on the high fence/wall, but it's closed up with for sale sign posted. For the whole 2 months I was in the area it was never open. I'm very very sad about this one. Maybe if you ask a local they might know if the son is still around for a private tour.

Waimea, Hawaii (Waimea is the true Hawaiian name for the community, but since there is another Waimea in the state they needed to call it something else on paper, for the postal service, so kamuela is simply a fake Hawaiian-ization of the name samuel, for Samuel Parker of Parker Ranch), annnnyway... the closed museum is on the "upper road," the one you take to go to kawaihae, on the left side of the road. [Willa, 05/27/2008]

I had the pleasure to visit the Kamuela Museum on October 18, 2002. It is a marvelous museum. The collection includes rare artifacts from Hawaiian prehistory, priceless furniture from the Iolani Royal Palace, and more moldy taxidermy than I care to think about. It's all wonderfully unorganized and crammed into every inch of wall and floor space. Everything is carefully labeled with hand-typed and even hand-written descriptions.

I am sad to report that the owner, Albert Solomon, recently passed away and his wife Harriet, now 89, has put the museum and home up for sale. Per their son, who was manning the museum the day I visited, no potential buyers are interested in preserving the museum intact or keeping it open to visitors. [Nathan L. Forrider, 10/27/2002]

On the Big Island of Hawaii, in Waimea, there is the Kamuela Museum. It is run by the grand daughter of the Parker ranch family (and she must be in her 80s) and her husband, the former police chief of Waimea. The museum is in their home and is their personal collection of priceless antiques that only a direct descendant of the power elite could have: native artifacts, and common junk such as 7-11 glasses, each with a typed card describing each item. I am 6'9" tall, and the husband was enamored with me (one of his obsessions was with freaks of nature). Before leaving he showed me his clippings from the Enquirer of the world's tallest and shortest people. These were stored in the drawer of a beautiful 150 year old hand carved buffet that had been a gift from the Emperor of Japan to the King of Hawaii in the 1850s. The museum is only a mile or so off the main hiway between the Hilo side and the Kona side of the island. I was there in 1995. [J. Oltmann, 05/08/1997]