The earliest history of Allerton Garden was intermingled with the upper part of the Lawa’i Valley that is now the McBryde Garden. Both were integral to the ahupua’a (land division) of Lawa’i. It was not until well after the arrival of the first Europeans in the late 1700s and the subsequent changes to the traditional Hawaiian way of life that the history of the lower Lawa’i Valley began to diverge from that of the upper valley.