How many steps is Koko Head?

It was built to haul radar equipment, not people

The US Army laid the line in the early 1940s, a tramway to carry supplies and equipment from a base camp up to a radar station on the summit. The station closed and the land passed to the City and County of Honolulu in 1966. The rails came out. The wooden cross-ties stayed where they were, and a supply line became one of the most popular workouts on the island.

If that sounds familiar, it is the same accident that made the Manitou Incline in Colorado: a railway nobody needed, ties spaced for a train rather than a foot, and a staircase that was never designed to be one.

Why 1,048 is not quite a fact

It is the count of the original ties, and the ties have not stayed original. Decades of erosion left gaps and rotten timbers, and from 2018 a volunteer group, the Kokonut Koalition, raised money and replaced them; it still holds a contract with the city to maintain the steps. Each rebuild moves the count a little, which is why news coverage of the trail settles for “more than 1,000”, and why anyone who counts on the way up tends to get a different answer.

The bunkers at the top

The concrete structures on the summit are what is left of the radar station. In July 2025 an eight-year-old fell down a shaft in one of them and was critically injured, and the city closed the whole trail until crews had sealed the access points. The signs there now say no trespassing on or in any bunker, and to use the viewing platform instead.

What your iPhone records

The summit sits 1,208 feet above sea level and the stairs start in a park at the foot of the crater, so most of that height is climbing. At ten feet per flight, expect somewhere around 100 flights in Apple Health, packed into less than a mile. The Manitou Incline gives you about twice that, the Empire State Building about the same.