What's with "the Garden Isle"? Kauaʻi is the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands — some five million years of weather have had the longest to work on it, and it shows. Near the island's center, Mount Waiʻaleʻale catches the trade winds and rings up among the wettest places on Earth, and all that rain has to go somewhere: it has cut the red-walled chasm of Waimea Canyon, fluted the green sea cliffs of the Nā Pali Coast, and filled the taro valleys of the north shore. The result is an island so lush it earned a single nickname that has stuck for generations — the Garden Isle. Watch the clouds pile up on Waiʻaleʻale and you are watching the machine that built the scenery.
Our Kauaʻi logo carries the hibiscus and the "Hawaiian Kingdom — Est. 1795" banner, the shared retro emblem of our Hawaiʻi towns; 1795 marks the founding of the Kingdom under Kamehameha — the Kingdom's birthday, not Kauaʻi's, since the island famously joined later, by agreement, in 1810. Rendered in worn black-and-white, like an old travel decal or crate label, it ties Kauaʻi to every other Hawaiian place we make. The hibiscus is island bloom and pure aloha. What makes this one Kauaʻi is the story behind it — the Garden Isle, the canyon and the cliffs, and the island that was never conquered.
Why People Visit Kauaʻi
People come to Kauaʻi for the oldest, greenest island in the chain and the quieter pace that comes with it. It rewards travelers who would rather hike a canyon rim or paddle a north-shore bay than chase a crowd — a place of waterfalls, taro valleys, and emerald cliffs, with a deep Hawaiian history and a slower, garden kind of aloha.
