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.
Set on the leeward side of the West Maui Mountains (Mauna Kahālāwai), Lahaina has always been a place of strong sun and wide ocean horizons — the bright, dry shore that gives Lahaina Noon its name and the islands their famous light.
