After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. entered World War II and quickly devised a radical method to communicate with its entire Pacific Fleet, ranging from Australia to the Indian Ocean, all the way to every allied submarine at the bottom of Tokyo Bay. The Navy began construction in 1942 of a top-secret high-powered radio facility in a natural amphitheater of Ha‘ikū Valley in the Ko‘olau Mountains atop Pu'ukeahiakahoe on the island of Oahu.

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High-scalers were employed to climb the steep Ko’olau cliffs perilously, drive steel spikes along the way, and hang sections of wooden ladder to the summit. Suspended copper wire then spanned between ridges some 2,200 feet high above the valley below, where a transmitter station was built to house an imported behemoth. This Alexanderson alternator was powerful enough to produce the necessary signal strength to transmit messages further than ever. Completed the following year, the station served as the primary long-range communication system for the U.S. Navy's Pacific Command until the successful end of the war.

 

In the 1950s, wooden ladders were replaced by galvanized steel, and the radio station at Ha‘ikū Valley was later inactivated in 1958, becoming an experimental Omega radio-navigation station. Coast Guard personnel moved into the station in 1972, and local hikers were subsequently allowed to climb the stairs after signing a waiver.

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After being featured in an April 9, 1981 episode of Magnum P.I., the stairs exploded in popularity with hikers who travelled from all over the world to experience the so-called “Stairway to Heaven,” which unfortunately led to increased instances of vandalism and litter, prompting the Coast Guard to close the stairs permanently in 1987.

 

This closure, however, did not stop hikers from accessing the stairs illegally, setting off an epic, decades-long feud with neighbors who live near the bottom of the stairs, who want nothing more than to see the stairs removed, pitted against activists who want to save the stairs and designate them as an historic landmark, all while government officials spar over access and usage rights.