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.
Roughly circular and about 552 square miles, Kauaʻi is the fourth-largest Hawaiian island and home to some 73,000 people, sitting at the northwest end of the main chain — far enough out that no road can circle it, since the Nā Pali cliffs see to that. Its summit, Kawaikini, rises above 5,200 feet near the rain-soaked center. Polynesian voyagers settled here more than a thousand years ago and built a society around the sea and the taro terrace; the Wailua river valley held one of the islands' great royal and sacred centers, a birthplace of chiefs, and Kauaʻi keeps its own folklore of the Menehune, the legendary builders said to have raised a stone ditch and fishpond that still stand today. Long before it was anyone's vacation, this was deeply settled, deeply storied Hawaiian ground.
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.
