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.
Today Kailua-Kona is the Big Island's western front door: flights land at Kona International Airport on Hualālai's 1801 lava flow, Aliʻi Drive runs its bayfront mile of shops and restaurants between the palace and the pier, coffee-farm tours climb into the belt, and the calm leeward water that made Kailua Bay a royal anchorage now fills with snorkelers, paddlers, and — every October — the finish line of the Ironman World Championship at Kailua Pier. The town has never incorporated; like every Hawaiian community it is governed at the county level, a census-designated place of about 20,000 that serves as capital of the Kona coast in everything but paperwork.
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.
