Where Kamehameha I lived and died — the Hawaiian Kingdom capital, 1812-1819. By 1810, King Kamehameha I had united the Hawaiian Islands under one rule for the first time in their history. In 1812, with the kingdom consolidated, he came home to Kona. He settled at Kamakahonu beside Ahuʻena Heiau at the north end of Kailua Bay — a royal compound on the shoreline he had known since boyhood — and ruled the unified Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from there for the next seven years. He died at Kamakahonu on May 8, 1819. By traditional Hawaiian custom, his bones were hidden in the cliffs of Kona by trusted attendants so that no enemy could ever claim his mana. They were never recovered. Six months later, his son Kamehameha II — Liholiho — and his stepmother Queen Kaʻahumanu broke the ancient ʻai kapu by sitting and eating with women at a feast in Kailua-Kona. The act ended the traditional Hawaiian religion overnight. In March 1820, when the first American missionaries arrived aboard the brig Thaddeus after a 163-day voyage from Boston, they stepped ashore into a kingdom that had just dismantled its own ancient order. They were led by Asa and Lucy Thurston and accompanied by Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia's translation work. The congregation they founded that summer at Kailua-Kona — Mokuʻaikaua — is the oldest Christian church in Hawaiʻi; the stone-and-coral-mortar building still standing on Aliʻi Drive was completed in 1837. The next year, Governor John Adams Kuakini — half-brother to Kaʻahumanu — finished Huliheʻe Palace next door. In 1874, King David Kalākaua bought Huliheʻe and made it a royal retreat. Queen Kapiʻolani was the last royal resident before the palace was sold in 1914 and saved by the Daughters of Hawaiʻi in 1927 as a museum. Today Huliheʻe is one of only three royal palaces in the United States — the other two are ʻIolani and Queen Emma's Summer Palace, both on Oʻahu. The capital moved to Honolulu in 1845. But the first decades of unified Hawaiʻi were governed from this stretch of black-rock coast under Hualālai, and the buildings that anchored that era — the church on the hill, the palace by the pier, the heiau at Kamakahonu — are all still here.
The year everything changed, twice. Kamehameha's death in May 1819 set off the fastest cultural transformation in Hawaiian history — and it happened here. That November, at Kailua, his son Liholiho — Kamehameha II — sat down and ate with the royal women, Queen Kaʻahumanu foremost among them, deliberately breaking the ancient kapu that separated men and women at meals. The act, remembered as the ʻAi Noa, dissolved the old religious order across the islands. Four months later, on March 30, 1820, the brig Thaddeus anchored in Kailua Bay carrying the first American missionaries to Hawaiʻi — arriving, by extraordinary timing, in the very season the old system had ended. Liholiho granted them a one-year trial. From that landing came Mokuʻaikaua Church: a thatched wooden meetinghouse by 1823, and after a fire, the stone-and-coral-mortar building of 1837 that still holds services above Aliʻi Drive. A year later Governor Kuakini finished Huliheʻe Palace across the road — lava rock and coral mortar, koa and ʻōhiʻa inside — the seaside retreat of Hawaiian royalty for two generations, restored in the 1920s and kept as a museum by the Daughters of Hawaiʻi since 1927.
Why People Visit Kailua-Kona Hawaiʻi
- Tour Puuhonua o Honaunau, sacred refuge with temples and coastal lava platforms.
- Walk Kaloko Honokohau paths, fishponds, petroglyphs, and quiet shoreline coves.
- Visit Hulihee Palace, seaside residence with artifacts and galleries.
- Stroll Alii Drive, palms, seawalls, and ocean viewpoints along the strip.
- Stand by the Kailua Pier, boats and breezes over the turquoise bay.
