Cook Landing Site (Waimea) Cook Landing Site (Waimea) The Cook Landing Site in Waimea on Kauai island in Hawaii, is where Captain James Cook landed at the mouth of the Waimea River on January 20, 1778. Cook was the first European reported to have sighted the Hawaiian Islands, and the January 20 landfall on southwestern Kauai was his first arrival upon Hawaiian soil. Cook Landing Site was registered as a National Historic Landmark on December 29, 1962. Hofgaard Park is a small county park in Waimea, a few blocks from the actual landing, that commemorates the historic events of Cook's landing. It is suspected
James Cook of his birthplace in Marton, by the opening of the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, located within Stewart Park (1978). A granite vase just to the south of the museum marks the approximate spot where he was born. Tributes also abound in post-industrial Middlesbrough, including a primary school, shopping square and the "Bottle 'O Notes", a public artwork by Claes Oldenburg, that was erected in the town's Central Gardens in 1993. Also named after Cook is the James Cook University Hospital, a major teaching hospital which opened in 2003 with a railway station serving it called James Cook opening in 2014.