49 Fun Facts About Haleakala National Park

Which famously winding Maui road do visitors drive to reach Haleakalā National Park's coastal district?

Hāna Highway carries visitors past Hāna town to the coastal entrance; no road inside the park links that district to the summit.

What does the name Haleakalā mean in Hawaiian?

House of the sun: hale means house and lā sun. In legend the demigod Māui hid near the summit and roped the sun's rays one by one as it rose.

In legend, why did the demigod Māui lasso the sun from Haleakalā's summit?

To slow it and lengthen the day: in the best-known telling his mother Hina's bark cloth would not dry, and the beaten sun agreed to cross the sky slowly for half the year.

In the Hawaiian legend, which relative showed Māui how to snare the sun on Haleakalā?

His grandmother, in the best-known telling, cooked bananas for the sun in the crater; once Māui stole them she gave him a stone axe and a hiding place by a wiliwili tree.

Which of these Hawaiian peaks rises higher than Haleakalā's 10,023-foot summit?

Mauna Kea and its neighbour Mauna Loa are the state's only higher peaks; measured from its base on the sea floor, Mauna Kea is taller than Mount Everest.

Despite its name, Haleakalā Crater is geologically what?

An erosional valley: streams cut two great valleys back into the summit until their heads met, leaving the Koʻolau and Kaupō gaps on either side.

The floor of Haleakalā Crater is dotted with which volcanic features?

Cinder cones stud a summit depression about 2,600 feet deep, and their loose cinders make hiking its trails feel like walking on a beach.

Which dating method showed in 1999 that Haleakalā last erupted long before the accepted date of about 1790?

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal under the youngest flows gave 1480 to 1600; the old 1790 date rested on comparing two explorers' coastal charts, neither accurate enough to judge.

Like Hawaii's other great volcanoes, Haleakalā is which type of volcano?

Shield volcano: fluid lava spread into broad, gentle slopes. USGS still counts Haleakalā as active, with at least ten eruptions in the past 1,000 years, though the park calls it dormant.

Haleakalā was originally part of a 1916 park that also included which two Big Island volcanoes?

Mauna Loa and Kīlauea formed the other section of the park until 1961, when it was split in two and Haleakalā became a national park in its own right.

A Hawaiian community group has restored ancient irrigated terraces in Haleakalā's coastal district to grow which staple crop?

Taro, or kalo, grows again at Kapahu Living Farm, which the group has run on park land since 1995; the harvest is made into poi and shared with the local community.

Haleakalā National Park is split between its summit district and which coastal district?

Kīpahulu lies on the wet windward coast, and no road inside the park joins it to the summit, so reaching it means a separate drive around the island.

The Pools of ʻOheʻo in Haleakalā's coastal district are known to tourists by which nickname?

Seven Sacred Pools is a nickname, said to come from a local hotel owner's advertising; far more than seven pools actually step down ʻOheʻo Gulch.

The Pipiwai Trail in Haleakalā's coastal district ends at which 400-foot waterfall?

Waimoku Falls ends a trail through a bamboo forest, but hikers are told to keep back from its base, where falling rock and flash floods strike without warning.

The upper valley above Haleakalā's coastal district is closed to the public to protect what?

Native rainforest species: the valley's fragile forest shelters rare birds, so only scientists and park managers are allowed in.

Which famous aviator is buried at Palapala Hoʻomau Church beside Haleakalā's coastal district?

Charles Lindbergh, dying of cancer, left a New York hospital in August 1974 to spend his last days at his Maui home, having sketched a simple grave for himself there.

How often does the Haleakalā silversword flower?

Once, then dies: the plant may wait decades as a silver ball of leaves, then sends up one tall stalk of hundreds of flower heads, scatters its seed and dies.

The Hawaiian name of Haleakalā's signature plant, ʻāhinahina, describes which colour?

Gray: ʻāhinahina is the silversword, whose leaves are coated in silvery hairs that reflect the fierce mountain sun and hold in moisture.

What once nearly wiped out the Haleakalā silversword?

Grazing livestock and souvenir hunters: goats and cattle ate the plants while visitors uprooted them as keepsakes, so the park now fences grazing animals out of the crater.

Which goose, Hawaii's state bird, did Boy Scouts carry into Haleakalā crater in 1962?

Nēnē are thought to have died out on Maui before 1890, so the 35 birds the Scouts hauled into the crater were the island's first in some 70 years.

Hawaii's state bird is thought to have evolved from which mainland bird?

Canada goose ancestors strayed to the islands, and their descendants adapted to bare lava: the webbing on the bird's feet shrank back to help it walk on rock.

Roughly how many Hawaiian geese were left in the wild by 1952?

About 30 birds remained after hunting and introduced predators; captive breeding, begun in 1949, has since rebuilt the wild flock to a few thousand.

Haleakalā National Park is said to hold more of what than any other US national park?

Endangered species: Hawaii's wildlife evolved in isolation, so invading animals, weeds and mosquito-borne bird malaria now threaten plants and birds found nowhere else.

Biologist Sam Gon III called Haleakalā the richest place on Earth for which tiny creatures?

Tardigrades, or water bears, survive the summit's fierce sun and freezing nights by drying into a dormant state, the same trick that lets them endure the vacuum of space.

The Hawaiian name coined in 2010 for Maui's rare kiwikiu describes which feature?

Its curved beak: no older Hawaiian name was known for the Maui parrotbill, so a language committee coined kiwikiu from kiwi, curved, and kiu, a chilly wind of its forest home.

As of 2024, how was Haleakalā fighting the insects that spread avian malaria?

Releasing males carrying Wolbachia bacteria works as mosquito birth control: wild females that mate with them lay eggs that never hatch, so each generation shrinks.

Which endangered seabird now nests mostly in burrows in Haleakalā crater?

Cats, mongooses and rats eat the chicks in their burrows, so the park works hard to keep feral animals out.

Hosmer Grove, beside Haleakalā's summit road, is a forest of what?

Introduced trees from around the world were planted here as a forestry experiment, and the tall newcomers now shade out the native plants beneath them.

Drivers need an advance reservation to enter Haleakalā's summit district in time for which daily sight?

Sunrise became so popular, with parking at the top so limited, that every vehicle entering between 3 and 7 am now needs a reservation.

Why did the Park Service suspend commercial bicycle tours inside Haleakalā National Park in 2007?

Multiple fatal accidents: three riders died within a year, so the park halted tours that had been coasting about 90,000 visitors a year down from the summit.

Which American author called the view from Haleakalā's summit 'the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed'?

Mark Twain wrote it in Roughing It after a freezing night on the summit, where he also amused himself by tumbling big rocks down into the crater.

What nickname is given to the cluster of telescopes just past Haleakalā's summit?

Science City sits on a gated road just outside the park, above the clouds, where clear, stable and nearly dust-free air makes the summit a prime site for astronomers.

Which sky-survey telescope on Haleakalā, added in 2006, has found thousands of asteroids and comets?

Pan-STARRS photographs the same sky again and again and compares the images to catch anything that moved; its main job is spotting asteroids that could threaten Earth.

The Mees Solar Observatory on Haleakalā is named for Kenneth Mees, research chief of which photography company?

Kodak: the English-born Mees built the company's research laboratories and ran them for four decades, and the solar observatory dedicated on Haleakalā in 1964 carries his name.

How do visitors reach Haleakalā Crater's three cabins?

By foot: even the nearest cabin lies almost four miles down a crater trail, so guests must carry in everything they need and carry all their rubbish back out.

Which two main trails drop into Haleakalā Crater from the summit area?

Sliding Sands and Halemauʻu both start high and descend, so the hard part comes last: the long climb back out in thin air.

Which animal is Hawaii's only native land mammal, every other one in Haleakalā National Park having arrived with people?

Hoary bat ancestors could fly in, but no other land mammal ever crossed the ocean unaided, so the islands' plants evolved without thorns or poisons to deter grazers.

UNESCO gave Haleakalā National Park which designation in 1980?

Biosphere Reserve: the 1980 listing paired Haleakalā with the islands' other volcanic national park as living laboratories for controlling alien species and restoring native ones.

Haleakalā's home island of Maui goes by which nickname?

The Valley Isle: lava from two volcanoes overlapped to make one island with a low neck of land between them, and Haleakalā alone forms over three-quarters of it.

Haleakalā's coastal district protects several ahupuaʻa, traditional Hawaiian land divisions that usually run from where to where?

From the mountains to the sea: each slice of land followed a watershed downhill, so one community had upland forest, farmland and fishing grounds of its own.

The giant four-metre solar telescope on Haleakalā's summit is named for which longtime Hawaii senator?

Daniel Inouye had represented Hawaii in the Senate for almost 50 years when he died in 2012; the telescope was renamed a year later to honour his commitment to scientific research.

Native gobies in the streams of Haleakalā's coastal district are known for which feat?

Climbing waterfalls: young gobies return from the sea and haul themselves up wet rock faces with suckers formed by their mouths and fins to reach the pools above.

Which explorer described waterfalls and villages along Haleakalā's coast in 1786, then became the first European to land on Maui?

Lapérouse, hunting for an anchorage, wrote that huts lined the shore so thickly that three or four leagues of coast could be taken for a single village.

Which philanthropist helped buy the coastal land added to Haleakalā National Park in 1969?

Laurance Rockefeller bought land around the ʻOheʻo pools that passed to the park in 1969, which is why a park centred on a 10,000-foot summit now reaches the shoreline.

Hawaii's state bird was bred back from near-extinction in the 1950s at a wildfowl reserve in which country?

England: a pair sent to Peter Scott's wildfowl trust at Slimbridge bred so well that most of the 35 birds released in Haleakalā crater in 1962 had been flown back from there.

What do the US military's telescopes on Haleakalā's summit mainly track?

Satellites and space debris are followed by the Maui Space Surveillance System, whose infrared telescopes let it keep tracking them in daylight as well as at night.

Which adventure novelist rode into Haleakalā Crater with cowboys and packhorses in 1907 during his Pacific voyage?

Jack London reached Maui on his ketch the Snark and wrote that a traveller might see things as great as Haleakalā elsewhere, but none greater.

Botanists have called Haleakalā's high slopes the world capital of which flowering plant?

Geraniums: four species grow nowhere else, including the world's only geranium pollinated by birds, its curved red flowers shaped to fit a honeycreeper's bill.

Haleakalā, like every Hawaiian volcano, was built as the Pacific Plate drifted over what?

A hot spot in the mantle: the plate carries each island off the plume in turn, which is why Haleakalā now erupts rarely while volcanoes on the youngest island erupt often.