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.
For a time Maui was the seat of that kingdom. Lahaina, on the island's west shore, served as the royal capital of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from about 1802 until 1845, when the seat of government moved to Honolulu. In those decades it was also one of the busiest whaling ports in the Pacific, where hundreds of ships wintered and a missionary community took root. Much of that historic town has since been lost, and Maui remembers Lahaina's royal and maritime past as a tender part of the island's story — the place where, for a generation, the Hawaiian kingdom kept its court.
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.
