Hilo

Polynesian settlers reached the Hilo area around 1100 AD, and oral history recalls people living along the Wailuku and Wailoa rivers; the name is said to mean "to twist". Hilo once named a district covering much of the island's east coast. When the missionary William Ellis visited in 1823, the main settlement was Waiākea on the south shore of the bay, and missionaries soon founded Haili Church. The Lyman family's mission house, built in 1838, still stands as the island's oldest surviving wood-framed building.

Sugar made the town. Plantations around the bay drew workers from China, Japan and elsewhere in Asia, the Hilo Sugar Mill produced thousands of tons a year by the 1880s, a railway ran north and south from 1899, and a breakwater across the bay was completed in 1929. On 1 April 1946 a tsunami generated by an earthquake near the Aleutian Islands struck Hilo, killing 96 people in the town; the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was set up in 1949 in response, and the railway never reopened. In May 1960 a tsunami from the great Chilean earthquake killed 61 more. The low-lying bayfront and Waiākea peninsula were not rebuilt but turned into parks and memorials, including the Wailoa River park.

Hilo spread inland from the 1960s. Downtown found a new role in the 1980s as a cultural centre of galleries and museums, and the Palace Theater reopened in 1998. The closure of the sugar plantations in the 1990s hit the local economy hard, and astronomy on Mauna Kea, developed at the invitation of the chamber of commerce after sugar's collapse, became an important part of the island's economy. In recent years the town has grown again.

Hilo's great cultural event is the Merrie Monarch Festival, a week of hula that begins every Easter Sunday in honour of King David Kalākaua, the "Merrie Monarch" credited with restoring hula and other traditions during his reign. Hālau hula from across Hawaii, the mainland and abroad compete over three nights in what is regarded as the most prestigious hula contest in the world, televised and streamed free online.

The town's identity mixes Native Hawaiian tradition with the cultures of the plantation era. The Japanese gardens of Liliʻuokalani Park, built in 1917–1919 and said to be the largest Edo-style gardens outside Japan, recall the Japanese immigrants who worked the Waiākea sugar plantation. Banyan trees planted by Babe Ruth, Amelia Earhart and other visitors are a local curiosity, and the Hilo Orchid Show, held since 1951, is the largest in the state. At ʻImiloa, exhibits in Hawaiian and English present Polynesian voyagers as "our first astronomers" alongside the telescopes on Mauna Kea.

Mauna Kea itself is sacred to many Native Hawaiians, and the building of telescopes on its summit remains a topic of debate. The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo gives the town a student population, and Jasmin Iolani Hakes' 2023 novel Hula, set in Hilo, won Honolulu magazine's book of the year award.

About 44,000 people lived in Hilo at the 2020 census, making it the largest settlement in Hawaii outside Oʻahu. It is not an incorporated city: the whole island is governed as the County of Hawaiʻi, of which Hilo is the seat, and the town is home to county, state and federal offices. The university, the astronomy base facilities — worth about $100 million a year to the island — the harbour and the Mauna Loa macadamia nut company south of town make up much of the rest of the economy.

Tourism matters but is lighter than on the sunny Kona side, which receives more than twice as many visitors. Daily life is unhurried: traffic moves slowly, shopping happens at the centres along Highway 11 and the farmers' market on market days, and rain is part of every week. Most homes lie on the slopes between the bay and Waiākea-Uka, and almost everyone depends on a car.

Recent years have brought reminders of the island's restlessness. The eruptions of 2018 destroyed communities in lower Puna to the south-east, and in November 2025 the footbridge to Coconut Island, a favourite place for picnics and jumping into the bay, collapsed while a county worker drove a mini-excavator across it, closing the island park indefinitely.

Hilo claims one of Hawaii's best-known dishes. Loco moco — white rice topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg and brown gravy — is reported to have been created at the Lincoln Grill in 1949 by Richard and Nancy Inouye for teenagers from a local sports club who wanted something cheap, quick and different from a sandwich. Café 100, destroyed twice by tsunamis and rebuilt, is the diner most associated with it today.

Poke, raw fish cut into cubes and seasoned with soy, sesame, seaweed or salt, is sold by weight at fish markets such as Suisan near the bay, and plate lunches of rice, macaroni salad and a main such as teriyaki or katsu are everyday food. The downtown farmers' market fills with tropical fruit, vegetables, fish, flowers and Hawaiian-style jams.

Hilo is also home to well-known local food makers. The Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Corporation, one of the world's leading macadamia producers, is based just south of town. Big Island Candies turns local ingredients into chocolate-dipped cookies and sweets, and homemade ice cream is the town's answer to the warm, damp afternoons.