Just up the road from Poʻipū sits Kōloa, where in 1835 the firm of Ladd & Company opened Hawaiʻi's first commercially successful sugar plantation. It was the start of something far larger than one mill. Over the decades that followed, workers arrived from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Portugal, and Puerto Rico to work the cane, and that gathering of arrivals became the foundation of modern Hawaiʻi's blended, multicultural community. Kōloa's plantation era ran for more than a century and a half, and you can still walk straight into it today.
Down at the water, Poʻipū Beach Park has been called the best beach in America — a pair of golden crescents with calm, protected swimming and a gentle break that has taught generations of beginners to surf. Nearby, the Spouting Horn forces the surf up through a lava tube and throws spray forty or fifty feet into the air, with a low moan that the old stories tied to a giant moʻo, or lizard, caught in the rock. West of town, the Allerton and McBryde Gardens fill Lāwaʻi Valley — two of only five National Tropical Botanical Gardens in the country.
Why People Visit Poʻipū
Poʻipū rewards visitors who want Hawaiʻi at its sunniest and most easygoing — a warm, protected coast with a century of south-shore history behind it. People come for Poʻipū Beach and the Spouting Horn, for the gardens and the golf, and for the plantation-era streets of Old Kōloa Town, where the Garden Isle's layered past sits a short walk from the sand.
