Roughly circular and about 552 square miles, Kauaʻi is the fourth-largest Hawaiian island and home to some 73,000 people, sitting at the northwest end of the main chain — far enough out that no road can circle it, since the Nā Pali cliffs see to that. Its summit, Kawaikini, rises above 5,200 feet near the rain-soaked center. Polynesian voyagers settled here more than a thousand years ago and built a society around the sea and the taro terrace; the Wailua river valley held one of the islands' great royal and sacred centers, a birthplace of chiefs, and Kauaʻi keeps its own folklore of the Menehune, the legendary builders said to have raised a stone ditch and fishpond that still stand today. Long before it was anyone's vacation, this was deeply settled, deeply storied Hawaiian ground.
Kauaʻi holds a place apart in Hawaiian history: it is the one main island King Kamehameha never took by force. Twice he massed great fleets to invade across the channel, and twice he was turned back — once by a storm, once by an epidemic that swept his army. In 1810, rather than face another war, Kauaʻi's ruling chief, King Kaumualiʻi, negotiated a peaceful agreement that brought the island into the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi while he continued to govern it. The story of the island that was joined by agreement, never conquered, is still a point of Kauaian pride.
Why People Visit Kauaʻi
People come to Kauaʻi for the oldest, greenest island in the chain and the quieter pace that comes with it. It rewards travelers who would rather hike a canyon rim or paddle a north-shore bay than chase a crowd — a place of waterfalls, taro valleys, and emerald cliffs, with a deep Hawaiian history and a slower, garden kind of aloha.
