The district has three sections: the homestead of missionaries Ellen and Reverend Elias Bond (1813–1896), Kalahikiola Church, and the Kohala Seminary.

[3] The Bonds sailed on the ship Gloucester from Boston November 14, 1840 with the Ninth Company from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

They were assigned a remote outpost on the northern coast of the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, in the area known as the Kohala district.

An earlier missionary to Kohala, Reverend Isaac Bliss (1804–1851), had just completed building the main house for the homestead compound when the Bonds arrived in June 1841.

The fieldstones were held together with burned coral mortar, to add a wash house, foundations for a woodshed and carpenter sheds, an archway, and courtyard walls, all around a large open space.

By 1848 the Foreign Missions Board wanted to reduce its financial support, so Bond offered to forego a salary if they would let him have the house which he had improved.

He would eventually expand the homestead and buy about 1,400 acres (570 ha) of the ancient land division (ahupuaʻa) called ʻIole.

[7] His son Benjamin Davis Bond (January 21, 1853 – November 2, 1930) finished medical school at the University of Michigan in 1882, and returned to live in the homestead.

Bond married Emma Mary Renton (1866–1951), and a wood-framed cottage was added at the east end of the main house for them.

A rock-crusher and power-house first produced gravel for paving the roads of the estate from their own quarry, and then was converted to process macadamia nuts grown on the property.

The second thatched structure built on the present Kalahikiola site, called the ʻIole mission station, was repaired by Bond, and replaced with a wooden framed building in 1846.

The name comes from ka lā hiki ola meaning roughly "the day of salvation approaches" in the Hawaiian language.

However, by the time the church was finished, the congregation was shrinking due to epidemics and emigration of laborers to employment outside the district.

The first sugarcane crop was harvested in 1865, and by 1867 it adopted a less authoritarian management style, compared to other sugar plantations in Hawaii that had slave-like conditions.

The church suffered even more major damage after the 2006 Kiholo Bay earthquake; one wall was reduced to a pile of rubble.

[15] The 30-inch (76 cm) thick walls were replaced with concrete blocks covered in plaster to resemble the older irregular stones.

[7] After all the children of Elias and Ellen Bond died, some grandchildren preserved the house with its original furnishings and used it as a retreat.

[26] After spending several years stabilizing and restoring the buildings,[27] their plans for an educational center[5] were delayed because of the 2006 earthquake damage.As of 2010[update] some trails were open to the public in the area.