NEH funding, including a challenge grant that helped the society raise an additional $900,000, helped establish the Kona Coffee Living History Farm in the 1990s. And in the 2000s, further NEH funding supported the development of the H.N. Greenwell Store Museum, as well as public programming that represents Kona’s international, diverse history. Now, at the society’s recreation of a 1920s coffee farm, visitors can interact with costumed interpreters who represent the daily activities of the Japanese farming family that owned it. At the H.N.Greenwell Store Museum, housed in the store building from 1870, visitors can glimpse mercantile activity in the 1890s, as it has been reconstructed from Greenwell’s journals and inventory lists. The store also contains an exhibition space, where the society showcases temporary art and historical exhibitions that engage and represent the local area.

In addition to the historic sites, the society offers consistent public programming representing Kona’s history and contemporary culture to tourists and locals alike. Every Thursday, the society offers Portuguese bread baking in its stone, wood-fired oven, which community members can take part in—the loaves are later sold in the society’s roadside stand. And the Hanohano ‘O Kona Lecture Series brings museum professionals, historians, and cultural experts to Kona each month at a community venue.

As a truly community-based organization, the stories represented in the society’s museum, stored in its archives, and presented in its exhibition space reflect the concerns and histories of the people who live in Kona and in Hawaiʻi in general. In fact, the Society’s archives are made up of documents and objects that record the history of agriculture, commerce, and local traditions in the area, and those collections have been primarily donated by community members and local families. An NEH preservation grant is helping keep these objects safe by ensuring the collection is maintained in a climate-controlled environment.