Native Hawaiians lived on this West Maui shore for centuries, with Lahaina a place of taro loʻi, fishponds, and the royal island of Mokuʻula at Mokuhinia. In the early 1800s Lahaina became the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi — the seat of the islands' royal government in the decades after the 1795 unification — and one of the most important towns in the Pacific.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Lahaina was a great whaling port. Hundreds of ships rode at anchor in its roadstead each season, and the town was a Pacific crossroads of sailors, traders, and goods from around the world. Sugar plantations later reshaped the surrounding lands, and Lahaina carried its layered history — Hawaiian royal seat, mission town, and seaport — into the modern era.
