60 Fun Facts About Maui

Where does Maui rank in size among the Hawaiian Islands?

Second-largest: only the Big Island is bigger, and Maui is really two volcanoes whose lava flows overlapped and fused into a single island.

Which nickname does Maui owe to the low isthmus joining its two volcanoes?

The Valley Isle: the "valley" is no river valley but a flat saddle, formed where lava from Haleakalā banked up against the older West Maui volcano.

What stands beside the national park on Haleakalā's summit?

An observatory: its telescopes track satellites for the US military, and its Pan-STARRS survey hunts asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth.

What does the name Haleakalā mean in Hawaiian?

House of the sun: the vast summit "crater" is no volcanic crater at all, because erosion carved it when two great valleys ate back into the mountain and met.

In Hawaiian legend, why did the demigod Māui lasso the sun?

Slow it down and lengthen the day: in one telling his mother Hina could not get her bark cloth dry before dark, so he roped the sun's rays as it rose.

Who voices the demigod Maui in Disney's Moana?

Dwayne Johnson: he has said the tattooed demigod was inspired by his grandfather Peter Maivia, a Samoan high chief and wrestler, and he returned for Moana 2.

Which town is the county seat of Maui County?

Wailuku: it has been the county seat since 1905, although neighbouring Kahului grew into the island's biggest town, with the main airport and harbour.

What does Kahului Airport's three-letter code, OGG, honour?

Aviation pioneer Bertram "Jimmy" Hogg: the Kauaʻi-born Hawaiian Airlines captain was given a history wall at the airport in 2014, because the code had long baffled travellers.

Which explorer became the first European to see Maui, in November 1778, without ever landing?

James Cook: he traded with islanders who paddled out to his ships but found no safe place to land, so no European stepped ashore for another eight years.

Maui's 1790 Battle of Kepaniwai was fought in which steep-walled gorge?

ʻĪao Valley: Kamehameha's invaders routed Maui's army there with cannon, yet he sailed home to fight a rival and did not finally win the island until 1795.

What dammed the stream at Maui's 1790 Battle of Kepaniwai, "the damming of the waters"?

The bodies of the dead: Kamehameha's cannon, salvaged from a captured ship and worked by the sailors John Young and Isaac Davis, drove Maui's army back up the gorge.

Which king moved the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom from Lahaina to Honolulu in 1845?

Kamehameha III: before the move he proclaimed Hawaii's first written constitution in 1840, creating a legislature partly elected by the people.

Ka Lama Hawaii, printed by students at Lahainaluna Seminary above Lahaina in 1834, was Hawaii's first what?

Newspaper: the school's press also printed its own paper money in 1843, but a student was expelled for counterfeiting it and the notes had to be recalled and reissued with secret marks.

Lahaina's giant banyan, planted in 1873, grew from a sapling shipped as a gift from which country?

India: the 8-foot sapling became a giant that the 2023 wildfire charred, killing about half its branches, yet fresh leaves sprouted within weeks.

Lahaina's banyan grew its many trunks from what?

Aerial roots: townspeople hung jars of water beneath the roots they wanted, coaxing them down to the ground, where each thickened into a new trunk.

What did the whaler John Palmer's crew do to Lahaina when women were kept off ships?

Shelled the town: the cannonballs landed by a missionary's house, and Maui's governor answered by building a coral-stone fort on the waterfront.

Which new fuel of the 1860s undercut the whale oil that had made Lahaina a boom town?

Petroleum: once kerosene made from it replaced whale oil in lamps, the whaling fleets dwindled and Lahaina turned from a rowdy port into a quiet plantation town.

Which hurricane was passing south of Hawaii as fierce winds drove the 2023 Lahaina wildfire?

Dora: the pressure gap between the distant Category 4 storm and a high to the north helped strengthen the gusts, though forecasters still debate how much it mattered.

Most of the 59 bridges on Maui's Hāna Highway share which feature?

One lane: 46 of the 59 are only one lane wide, so drivers must stop and take turns at each crossing, where signs tell them to yield to oncoming traffic.

Roughly how many curves does a driver negotiate on Maui's winding Road to Hāna?

About 600: the usual count is some 620 bends, so although Hāna lies only about 52 miles from Kahului the drive takes well over two hours even without stops.

What shape is Molokini, the islet off Maui's south coast?

A crescent: only the southern rim of a drowned volcanic crater breaks the surface, and its curve shelters the cove inside, while the islet itself is a seabird sanctuary where landing is banned.

Molokini sits in the ʻAlalākeiki Channel between Maui and which other island?

Kahoʻolawe: Hawaii's kings once banished convicts to the smallest of the main Hawaiian islands, using it as a penal colony, and nobody lives there today.

Before Molokini's 1977 protection, which coral was harvested there for jewellery?

Black coral: it is named for its dark skeleton, which is made into jewellery, while the living colonies can be white, green or yellow instead.

Which US military branch used the smallest of Maui County's four main islands as a bombing range until 1990?

The Navy: protesters began occupying the island in 1976 and sued to stop the bombing, and four years after the 1990 halt the Navy handed it back to Hawaii.

Which whales gather each winter to breed in the sheltered ʻAuʻau Channel off Maui?

Humpbacks: more than half of the North Pacific's humpbacks winter around Hawaii to mate and calve, which led to a national marine sanctuary being created for them.

Which South Maui resort town sits in Haleakalā's rain shadow, making it one of the island's driest places?

Kīhei: the trade winds drop their rain on Haleakalā's far side, where more than 300 inches can fall in a year, before they reach the town's sunny beaches.

Which rain-soaked spot on Haleakalā's windward slope averages about 400 inches of rain a year?

Big Bog: once a rain gauge was installed there, its average of about 404 inches overtook Kauaʻi's Mount Waiʻaleʻale, long billed as the wettest spot in Hawaii.

Maui is Hawaii's third most populous island, behind the Big Island and which other?

Oʻahu: about 70% of Hawaii's residents live there, around Honolulu, which took the kingdom's capital away from Maui's Lahaina in 1845.

Hawaii's last plantation of which crop closed on Maui in 2016?

Sugarcane: the state's last sugar mill fell silent that December, after its owner put the farm's operating loss at about $30 million for a single year.

Maui's Ulupalakua winery, founded in 1974, began by making wine from which fruit?

Pineapple: it was meant as a stopgap while the first grapevines matured on Haleakalā's slopes, but visitors liked the wine so much that it stayed in the range.

Hoʻokipa Beach on Maui's north shore is renowned worldwide for which sport?

Windsurfing: steady trade winds blowing across big reef-breaking waves make it a natural arena, and Maui became the sport's test bed for new gear in the early 1980s.

The big-wave break at Peʻahi got its nickname in 1975 from which film?

Jaws: three Maui surfers coined the name after the break suddenly turned huge and dangerous on them, as unpredictable as a shark attack.

What tows surfers into Peʻahi's winter waves, which can top 60 feet?

Jet skis: the pioneers of the 1990s first towed one another behind inflatable boats, then turned to personal watercraft to catch waves too big to paddle into.

Which surfer co-invented tow-in surfing and made his name riding Peʻahi?

Laird Hamilton: he and friends nicknamed the Strapped Crew fixed their feet to short boards with straps and towed one another into waves once thought too big to ride.

Which school hosts the Maui Invitational, the college basketball tournament first played in 1984?

Chaminade University: the tiny Honolulu school stunned top-ranked Virginia in 1982, and Virginia's coach then suggested it start a Hawaii tournament.

From 1999 the PGA Tour's season-opening Tournament of Champions was played at which Maui venue?

The Plantation Course at Kapalua: Hideki Matsuyama shot a Tour-record 35 under par there in 2025, but drought and water restrictions on Maui then forced the 2026 event to be cancelled.

Which favourite wife of Hawaii's first king, later co-ruler as kuhina nui, was born at Hāna on Maui?

Kaʻahumanu: months after the king died she sat down to eat with his heir, publicly breaking the taboo that kept men and women apart at meals.

Which aviator retired to Maui's remote Kīpahulu district and was buried there after his death in 1974?

Charles Lindbergh: told his cancer could not be cured, he left a New York hospital and flew home to die on Maui, having sketched a simple design for his own grave and coffin.

What happens to a Haleakalā silversword after it flowers for the first time?

It dies: a silversword may wait decades to send up its single flowering stalk, and visitors who once ripped the plants up as souvenirs left the species reliant on park protection.

What kind of bird is the nēnē, Hawaii's state bird, which lives wild in Haleakalā's crater?

A goose: descended from Canada geese that reached Hawaii long ago, it gave up migrating and evolved half-webbed feet for walking on rough lava.

Haleakalā shared a single national park with which Big Island park until 1961?

Hawaiʻi Volcanoes: the 1916 Hawaii National Park spanned two islands, and only after Haleakalā broke away as its own park did the Big Island half take its present name.

As of 2025, what do visitors need to enter Haleakalā's summit for sunrise, between 3 and 7 am?

A reservation: the park rations pre-dawn entry to protect the summit, and those who get a slot find it regularly wet, windy and below freezing before sunrise.

Which dating method showed that Haleakalā last erupted between 1480 and 1600, not around 1790 as long believed?

Radiocarbon dating: charcoal from the lava overturned the old date, which had rested on small differences between two explorers' charts drawn seven years apart.

What is the ancient landmass called that the island once formed with Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi and Kahoʻolawe?

The now-submerged Penguin Bank was part of it too.

What broke up the prehistoric landmass that once included Maui?

Subsidence and rising seas: the volcanoes' own weight pressed the crust down until the ocean flooded the low saddles of a landmass once about 50 percent bigger than today's Big Island.

The Maui Ocean Center aquarium, opened in 1998, stands beside which of the island's harbours?

Māʻalaea: the aquarium draws its seawater straight from the bay beside it, an open flow that helps the living corals in its tanks and nursery thrive.

What did the Maui Jim company start out selling on the beaches of Maui in 1980?

Sunglasses: the beach stall grew into a global brand that moved its head office far from any surf, to Peoria, Illinois, and was bought by Gucci's owner Kering in 2022.

Which West Maui beach did Amfac begin turning into a resort in the 1960s?

Kāʻanapali: the resort outlasted its developer, for when Amfac's Hawaii arm went bankrupt in 2002 the company that emerged took the name Kaanapali Land.

Which San Francisco tycoon, whose name survives in a north-shore Maui town, founded the HC&S plantation company in the 1870s?

Claus Spreckels: the German-born refiner built Spreckelsville into a vast plantation, fell out bitterly with two of his own sons, and saw Alexander & Baldwin take the company over in 1898.

Puʻu Kukui, the 5,788-foot summit of the West Maui Mountains, translates as what?

Candlenut hill: Hawaiians burned the oily nuts of the kukui tree for light, and the peak named after it is one of the rainiest places in all the islands.

Upcountry Kula is home to a well-known farm growing which fragrant crop?

Lavender: Kula sits thousands of feet up Haleakalā, cool enough that winter mornings can dip to 40°F and some homes have fireplaces, a far cry from the beaches below.

Waiʻānapanapa State Park near Hāna is famous for a small beach of sand in which colour?

Black: the park's name means "glistening water", and its cave pools are said to run red with a murdered princess's blood, a colour that swarms of tiny shrimp really do bring.

Kūkaʻemoku, a 1,200-foot landmark in a West Maui state park, is better known by what name?

ʻĪao Needle: it is not a free-standing spire at all but the tip of a sharp, eroded ridge, which looks like a needle only when viewed end-on.

In legend, what did Māui haul up from the seabed with his fish-hook, Manaiakalani?

New islands: he is said to have baited the hook with the wing of his mother's pet bird and let his brothers think they had snagged a great fish, so they paddled hard.

In the legend of the navigator Hawaiʻiloa, recorded in the 19th century, which of his relatives gave Maui its name?

His eldest son: the son had himself been named for the demigod Māui, and other children in the tale lent their names to Kauaʻi and Oʻahu; historians doubt the story is ancient.

Which French explorer became the first European to come ashore on Maui, in May 1786?

Jean-François de Lapérouse: the bay where he landed bears his name, but two years later he and both his ships vanished, their wrecks traced to the Solomon Islands only decades afterwards.

Haleakalā, which makes up about three-quarters of Maui, is what type of volcano?

Shield volcano: runny basalt spread out into a broad, gentle dome so vast that about 97% of its volume lies hidden below sea level.

When the road to Hāna opened in the 1920s, what was the roadway made of?

Dirt: the rough, potholed roadway of dirt and gravel rattled cars for decades and was not completely paved until the 1960s.

Which Maui king, whose name a modern highway carries, built the Alaloa, an ancient 'long road'?

Piʻilani: his road had no bridges, so travellers are said to have swung across East Maui's streams on ropes of vine, and his son Kihapiʻilani carried the route on to Hāna.

Completed in 1935, the road to Haleakalā's summit climbs mainly by what?

Switchbacks: the road has no streetlights or guard rails, yet sunrise visitors must drive its blind turns in the dark, hours before dawn.