Native Hawaiians settled Hawaiʻi Island roughly a thousand years ago, and it became the seat of the chief who would unite the islands: Kamehameha I, born in the Kohala district, had brought the major islands together under the Hawaiian Kingdom by 1795. In 1793 Captain George Vancouver had given Kamehameha a gift of cattle, which were set loose and multiplied across the uplands — the start of the island's ranch country. The first American missionaries landed at Kailua-Kona in 1820, and through the nineteenth century the island took on coffee, sugar, and cattle alongside its Hawaiian traditions. It is the largest of the Hawaiian Islands and, geologically, the youngest — still being built by its volcanoes.
The youngest and largest Hawaiian island — where Hawaiian cowboys work cattle country under snow-capped Mauna Kea, lava glows at Kīlauea, and coffee grows in the Kona clouds. Hawaiʻi Island, the Big Island, is bigger than all the other Hawaiian islands combined and still growing, its volcanoes adding new land to the map. It holds two coasts, many of the world's climate zones, the tallest mountain on Earth measured from the sea floor, and a ranch country older than the mainland cowboy. Volcanoes, coffee, snow, and paniolo — this page tells the story.
Why People Visit the Big Island
People come to the Big Island for the volcanoes, the coffee, and the sheer range of it — snow and lava, ranch and reef, all on one island. Its towns of Hilo, Kona, and Waimea give it two coasts and a paniolo heartland, and the land itself is still being built at the volcano's edge.
