Today Maui is known the world over for its landscape. The Road to Hāna threads the rainforest coast past waterfalls and sea cliffs; ʻĪao Valley rises green and sudden behind Wailuku; humpback whales fill the channel each winter; and Haleakalā stands over it all. It is a place that asks to be treated as more than scenery — a living Hawaiian home with a deep past — and that is how it rewards the people who come to it with respect: the Valley Isle, between two volcanoes, ringed by the Pacific.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries reshaped the land. Sugar and pineapple plantations spread across the central valley and the slopes, drawing workers from around the Pacific and diverting West Maui's streams to irrigate the cane — a transformation that brought new communities and lasting costs. The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was overthrown in 1893 and the islands annexed by the United States in 1898; Hawaiʻi became the fiftieth state in 1959. Through all of it Native Hawaiian culture endured on Maui, carried in language, place names, and the steady work of keeping tradition alive.
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.
