The name of Iroquois Point was derived from the name USS
Iroquois which was held by two
U.S. Navy ships. Both ships had history that related to that spot at the entrance to Pearl Harbor. USS
Iroquois, a steam
sloop of war commissioned in 1850, was outfitted as a
hospital ship to provide care to U.S. sailors aboard vessels anchored in
Honolulu Harbor, and it is believed that the ship was anchored near the present Iroquois Point site. The second USS
Iroquois, a commercial
steam tug commissioned in 1898, was assigned to Commander F. Merry as part of his operations at Naval Station Honolulu. During WWII the Seabees built a Seabee encampment of four 1000 man Construction Battalion areas at Iroquois Point with a chapel. They also built an Advance Base Reshipment Depot (ABRD) and an Advance Base Construction Depot (ABCD). Iroquois Point also had an annex to the Bishop point Section Station and
Net Depot across the harbor channel. The annex had a barracks, officer's quarters and 600' of
pier. Starting in the summer of 2003 this U.S. Navy property was leased to Hunt Building Co. and Fluor Federal Services LLC—a joint venture now operating as Ford Island Properties—in exchange for in-kind construction and infrastructure repairs on
Ford Island. This unprecedented arrangement was made possible through special legislation passed by
Congress in 1999. The Navy gave the developers a 65-year lease of Iroquois Point/Puuloa, a parcel on Ford Island, and the
Hālawa Landing—all underutilized Navy properties. The developers also were allowed to purchase of housing at
Kalaeloa after three years and given outright ownership of the former
Waikele Naval Magazine (Gordon, 2005). Built in the 1960s, the homes on the north side of Puuloa Lagoon were empty when renovations began in August 2003, with more than 100 tradesmen working on a daily basis, moving block by block through the housing development. Something less than half of the 1,463 homes were upgraded with an initial investment of about $20 million. Beyond that, several million dollars is to be invested for amenities, such as a community center (Gordon, 2005). Iroquois Point housing lies directly under the
glideslope of runway 8L of
Honolulu International Airport. Neighborhood residents are often witness to large commercial and military jets that land at the airport flying low over the area. ==Education==