Pāʻia is a story of perseverance. A fire in the 1930s swept the town, and on April 1, 1946 one of the largest tsunamis in the islands' history struck Lower Pāʻia. Each time the town rebuilt. When the plantation began to wind down and central Maui grew, many families moved on to Kahului and Wailuku in the 1950s, and Pāʻia settled into a quieter era — smaller, weathered, and waiting for its next life.
It found that life in the counterculture. Through the 1960s and 1970s a wave of artists, surfers and free spirits drifted in and claimed the sleepy sugar town as their unofficial capital. The pastel storefronts filled with galleries, boutiques and a now-legendary natural-foods market on Baldwin Avenue; on the one main street, old-school hippies, professional surfers and new-age wanderers brushed shoulders. The vibe turned barefoot and bohemian, a slice of the Summer of Love frozen on a Hawaiian shore. Pāʻia became "the hippest little town on Maui," and the easygoing, salt-tousled feel from those years never left.
Why People Visit Pāʻia
Pāʻia offers a whole mood in one small town: bohemian, barefoot charm, world-class wind and surf, and the romance of the open road to Hāna. It is the coolest little town on Maui — and for the artists, surfers and free spirits who live here, simply home, the place where old Maui still feels like itself.
