What’s with women’s soccer? Every girl who laces up owes something to a kid from Pāʻia. Patsy Takemoto Mink was born on Maui’s north shore in 1927, became Maui High School’s first female student-body president, and graduated valedictorian in 1944 — in an era when girls were allowed only the half-court game in basketball. When every medical school rejected her because she was a woman, she went to law school instead, and in 1964 she became the first woman of color elected to the United States Congress. There she co-authored the thirty-seven words of Title IX in 1972 — the law that opened American education, and its playing fields, to girls and women. In 1971, about 700 girls played high school soccer nationwide; today nearly 400,000 do, with hundreds of college programs and a thriving professional game beyond them. The athletic field at Maui High School is named Patsy T. Mink Field in her honor, and in 2024 the nation honored her again: the United States Mint issued the Patsy Takemoto Mink quarter, the twelfth coin of the American Women Quarters Program, its reverse showing her holding the Title IX legislation with a lei at her shoulders for Hawaiʻi.
For a time Maui was the seat of that kingdom. Lahaina, on the island's west shore, served as the royal capital of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from about 1802 until 1845, when the seat of government moved to Honolulu. In those decades it was also one of the busiest whaling ports in the Pacific, where hundreds of ships wintered and a missionary community took root. Much of that historic town has since been lost, and Maui remembers Lahaina's royal and maritime past as a tender part of the island's story — the place where, for a generation, the Hawaiian kingdom kept its court.
Why People Visit Maui
Maui draws visitors for its landscape and its depth — a sacred volcanic summit, a rainforest coast road, a green valley behind the harbor towns, and the Pacific where humpbacks winter — all carried by a living Native Hawaiian culture. People come for Haleakalā, the Road to Hāna, and the beaches, and stay for the quiet of upcountry and the sense of a place with a long memory. It is scenic, storied, and unmistakably Hawaiian.
