Hanalei

Hanalei was densely populated long before Europeans arrived. Its people grew taro, bananas, breadfruit, sweet potatoes, yams and coconuts on the river plain and fished the bay; the name is usually translated as "crescent bay" or "lei making". In 1817 two short-lived Russian forts near Hanalei were briefly part of tsarist Russian America, after Kauaʻi's chief Kaumualiʻi, in dealings with the Russian-American Company's agent Georg Anton Schäffer, signed a "treaty" granting Tsar Alexander I a protectorate over the island. In 1824 Kamehameha II's royal yacht, the Pride of Hawaii, struck a reef and sank near the mouth of the Waiʻoli River; its remains were excavated by Smithsonian archaeologists between 1995 and 2000. American missionaries settled at Waiʻoli in 1834, and their church of 1841 still stands as the Mission Hall.

Hawaiian royalty visited often in the 19th century; a visit by Prince Albert Kamehameha, son of Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, gave the neighbouring plantation of Princeville its name. From the 1860s Chinese workers whose plantation contracts had ended turned the wetlands over to rice, which was shipped to Honolulu and became the islands' second-largest export crop. Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese farmers followed, and the community built rice mills, schools, stores, churches and temples. After annexation in 1898 Hawaiian rice could not compete with California's, and the pier, lengthened for the trade in 1912, was abandoned for shipping in 1933.

Today taro farms fill much of the lower valley, part of which became a national wildlife refuge in 1972. Hurricane Iniki badly damaged the pier in 1992. In April 2018 a gauge just west of the village recorded 49.69 inches of rain in 24 hours, the greatest total on record in the United States; landslides and floods cut the highway, leaving the Kuhio Highway closed as of November 2018, and Hāʻena State Park reopened only after a long closure.

Hanalei's look and pace are bound up with farming and the sea. The valley floor is a patchwork of flooded taro fields worked by families, many of them descended from the Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese rice farmers of the early 20th century, and the pier at the river mouth has long been where families fish, picnic and swim. In summer the bay fills with paddleboards and moored sailboats; in winter it becomes one of the island's favourite surfing spots.

The village has an outsized place in popular culture. Scenes of South Pacific, released in 1958, were filmed in town and at Lumahaʻi Beach, and the bay and nearby Princeville appear in The Descendants of 2011. Haruki Murakami set a short story, "Hanalei Bay", here. A long-circulating reading of "Puff, the Magic Dragon" places Puff's homeland of "Hanah Lee" in Hanalei, an interpretation the song's authors have rejected.

Older Hawaiian traditions are rooted along the coast to the west. At Hāʻena, archaeological sites tied to the hula, including a heiau dedicated to Laka, sit above the beaches, and the Nā Pali coast beyond was settled by Polynesian voyagers and served as a link in trade between Hanalei, Waimea and Niʻihau. The Waiʻoli Mission District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, keeps the missionary chapter of the story, and the Kuhio Highway itself, with its one-lane bridges, is on the register too.

Hanalei is a census-designated place with a population of 444 at the 2020 census; Princeville, across the river, had 2,157. Holiday rentals, restaurants, surf and paddleboard hire, kayak outfitters and the boat charters that leave from the bay for the Nā Pali coast provide much of the work, alongside taro farming: about 60 per cent of Hawaii's taro is grown in the area around the lower river.

Hanalei Elementary School serves the village's younger children, while older students travel to middle and high school in Kapaʻa on the east coast. Everything arrives along the single highway and its one-lane bridges, so traffic, visitor numbers and parking are the everyday local issues; Hāʻena State Park now needs a parking reservation, with a daily limit of 900 people, under an agreement with a local nonprofit negotiated during its long closure after the 2018 floods.

The floods remain a reference point. Water stood eight feet deep near Hanalei, power failed in Hanalei and Wainiha, the post office reopened only at the end of July 2018, and Hurricane Lane brought further flooding to the same area that August. Reconstruction of the highway was estimated at about $100 million.

Taro is the crop that defines Hanalei, and the valley's flooded fields produce much of Hawaii's supply. Its root is pounded into poi, the traditional Hawaiian staple, and its leaves wrap laulau, parcels of pork, beef or chicken with salted butterfish; newer uses include taro doughnuts sold from a food truck in the village. The plate lunch — rice, macaroni salad and a main such as kalua pork or teriyaki — and poke, cubes of raw fish dressed with soy, sesame or seaweed, are everyday food here as across the islands.

Much of the produce comes from farms on the north shore itself, sold at the Hanalei Farmers Market near the church in town and at the Waipā Farmers Market just outside it. Shave ice, finely shaved ice drenched in flavoured syrups, is the classic way to cool down after the beach. Restaurants and food trucks line the highway through the village.