Kauaʻi holds a place apart in Hawaiian history: it is the one main island King Kamehameha never took by force. Twice he massed great fleets to invade across the channel, and twice he was turned back — once by a storm, once by an epidemic that swept his army. In 1810, rather than face another war, Kauaʻi's ruling chief, King Kaumualiʻi, negotiated a peaceful agreement that brought the island into the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi while he continued to govern it. The story of the island that was joined by agreement, never conquered, is still a point of Kauaian pride.
Sugar is gone now, and tourism has taken its place, but Kauaʻi wears it more lightly than its neighbors. It stayed the green, quiet island — slower than Oʻahu, less built than Maui — and when Hurricane Iniki, a Category 4 storm, tore across it in September 1992, the island rebuilt and stayed itself. Today its economy runs on nature travel, diversified farms, taro, and coffee — Kauaʻi is home to the largest coffee farm in the United States — along with a film industry drawn by the same scenery everyone else comes for: the canyon, the cliffs, the waterfalls, and the green. The Garden Isle has changed hands and changed crops, but never its character.
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.
