The deeper change came by paper. The Great Māhele of 1848 redrew who could hold the land, and on Maui’s dry slopes the answer became cattle. Herds spread above Wailea, and the great ʻUlupalakua Ranch took shape across the uplands where sweet potato had once grown. The coast below stayed quiet and largely empty — scrub, lava, and a few fishing camps — a stretch of shoreline that the cattle era passed over and the twentieth century would rediscover. For decades the busiest traffic through Wailea was paniolo driving cattle down the dry slopes toward the landings, while the reef below kept its fish, its surgeonfish, and its quiet largely to itself.
Then, for a few years, the quiet coast became a drill ground. During the Second World War the Marines trained along this shore for the island campaigns of the Pacific, and they gave Ulua Beach a grim nickname: “Little Tarawa,” after the atoll where they would make one of the war’s bloodiest amphibious landings. Men who rehearsed in this gentle surf carried its lessons to the far side of the ocean. Today the beach is back to umbrellas and snorkels, the name remembered mostly by those who go looking for it.
Why People Visit Wailea, Hawaiʻi
Wailea offers a seamless beach-and-path experience: swimming, snorkeling, strolling, and light shopping between coves. It is sunny, refined, and family friendly, with year-round appeal in its beaches, walkways, and public access. Natural beauty and easy comfort sit side by side, and a deep Hawaiian past — the goddess Lea, the fishing shore of Kahamanini, the Marines’ “Little Tarawa” — runs quietly beneath the polish.
