The Mākaha era began in the 1930s when Honolulu surfers first ventured west to ride the leeward-coast waves, and accelerated in 1952 when John Lind's Waikīkī Surf Club and the Waiʻanae Lions Club organized the Mākaha International Surfing Championships. The first running of the contest at Mākaha Beach in 1953-1954 was the world's first international surfing competition; the event grew through the 1950s and 1960s into the unofficial world championships, drew thousands of spectators out to the Westside every November and December, ran on ABC's Wide World of Sports in 1962 as the first televised surf contest ever, and continued at Mākaha until 1971 — when global surf attention shifted to the North Shore breaks at Pipeline and Sunset Beach. Greg Noll caught what surfers of the era called the biggest wave ever ridden, at Mākaha, in 1969. The Mākaha-born lifeguard Richard "Buffalo" Keaulana — born 1934, with a royal genealogy that ran through Kamehameha I on his father's side and Kekaulike on his mother's side, and the 1960 Mākaha International champion — founded Buffalo's Big Board Surfing Classic at Mākaha Beach in 1977, featuring canoe-surfing, tandem surfing, bullyboarding, bodysurfing, and longboards, and the Classic still runs every February. Behind the surf, in Mākaha Valley, Kāneʻāki Heiau is one of the most thoroughly restored ancient heiau in Hawaiʻi — a wahi pana that the Bishop Museum restored across the 1970s and opened to respectful public visits Tuesday through Sunday in 1990. The heiau is sacred ground; visitors observe quietly.
Today Waiʻanae is, above everything, a residential Native Hawaiian community on the leeward coast of Oʻahu: the long Waiʻanae moku running from Kahe to Kaʻena Point along Farrington Highway, the Waiʻanae Mountain Range rising to Mount Kaʻala behind it, Mākaha Beach and the big-wave surf credentials that started the world's first international surfing competition, the protected swimming waters of Pōkaʻī Bay, the working ahi-tuna port at the Waiʻanae Small Boat Harbor, and the long ahupuaʻa heritage that has carried these shores for centuries. Our Waiʻanae designs are made for that coast — the leeward Westside, the Royal Center of the moku, and the beach that taught the world what big-wave surfing looked like.
Why People Visit Waiʻanae Hawaiʻi
Waiʻanae offers the original home of big-wave surfing at Mākaha Beach, the world's first international surfing competition (1953-1954) and the long-running Buffalo's Big Board Surfing Classic, the protected swimming waters of Pōkaʻī Bay with its Pōkaʻī coconut-grove legend and Kūʻīlioloa Heiau, the 15th-century Kāneʻāki Heiau in Mākaha Valley, the 4,025-foot summit of Mount Kaʻala as the highest peak on Oʻahu, the westernmost tip of Oʻahu at Kaʻena Point, and the long Native Hawaiian heritage of the Waiʻanae moku that has carried this coast for centuries. It is the leeward Westside of Oʻahu — a residential community whose culture is alive, and where the world first watched surfers ride big waves on television. On the Westside since time before contact.
