Maui is the Valley Isle, two volcanoes joined by a green central plain. The older West Maui Mountains rise on one side, cut by the deep cleft of ʻĪao Valley; the vast shield of Haleakalā climbs on the other. The first people to call it home were Polynesian voyagers who reached the islands more than a thousand years ago, navigating thousands of miles of open Pacific by the stars. They built a society organized around the ahupuaʻa — land divisions running from the mountains to the sea — fishing the reefs, growing taro and sweet potato, and keeping a rich oral tradition of chant and genealogy. Maui has been a Native Hawaiian homeland, continuously, ever since.
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.
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.
