Lihue

In ancient times Līhuʻe was a small village in the district of Puna, on the south-east coast of Kauaʻi, within the land division of Kalapaki; its name means "cold chill" in Hawaiian. Kauaʻi stood apart from the rest of the islands for longer than any other: Kamehameha I's two planned invasions were both called off, and in a diplomatic agreement of 1810 its ruler Kaumualiʻi accepted Kamehameha as his overlord. In 1837 the royal governor Kaikioʻewa moved his seat from Waimea to Līhuʻe, naming it after land he owned on Oʻahu.

Sugar made the town. The German immigrant Hermann Widemann started Grove Farm in 1854, one of the first sugarcane plantations in Hawaii, and the Līhuʻe plantation struggled until William Harrison Rice built the first irrigation system in 1856. George Norton Wilcox leased Grove Farm in 1864 and later bought it, building irrigation that carried water from the wet mountains to the cane fields, a model copied across the islands. A large sugar mill made Līhuʻe the island's central town. Paul Isenberg brought German settlers from 1881, and the first Lutheran church in Hawaii was founded here in 1883, holding services in German into the 1960s.

The 20th century brought the county government, a library in 1924 that later became the Kauaʻi Museum, and an airport that made Līhuʻe the island's gateway. Kauaʻi's sugar era ended in 2009, when the last crop on the island was harvested, and tourism took its place. Grove Farm's main house is now a museum, and the Wilcox family's Kilohana estate holds a restaurant and gift shops.

Līhuʻe is the island's administrative and practical centre rather than a resort, and its culture is that of a plantation town grown up. Sugar brought workers to the islands from China, Japan, Portugal, the Philippines and Korea, and about half of the town's people identified as Asian at the 2000 census. Grove Farm's workers' cottages, the Kaipu Camp built between 1913 and 1917, and the Kauaʻi Museum's exhibits on the island's history keep the plantation story in view.

Hawaiian heritage is present too. The ʻAlekoko, or Menehune, fishpond on the Hulēʻia River, the largest on the island, is credited in legend to the Menehune, a mythical people said to have lived in Hawaii before the Hawaiians, and a local group has been restoring it since 2018. Up the coast, the Wailua River valley holds a complex of heiau, temples.

Kauaʻi people take pride in an island that is smaller, quieter and more rural than Oʻahu, Maui or the Big Island, where building heights are capped and wild chickens roam the roadsides. Its notable people include the surfer Bethany Hamilton and General Eric Shinseki, a former US Army chief of staff.

Līhuʻe had about 6,500 people at the 2010 census, making it the second-largest town on Kauaʻi after Kapaʻa. The county administration building, Kauaʻi Community College, Kauai High School and the Kukui Grove Center, the island's largest shopping centre with its only big department store, are all here, alongside car dealerships, offices and restaurants.

The town handles almost everything that enters or leaves the island. The airport on its eastern edge is the main gateway for visitors, and Kauaʻi's main seaport at Nāwiliwili, directly south-east of town, receives cargo and cruise ships. The Kauaʻi Bus serves the town, and both of the island's main highways begin in Līhuʻe, which makes its roads, especially towards Kapaʻa, the most congested on Kauaʻi.

Daily life follows a small-town rhythm: commuters in the morning, errands at the shopping centres, lunch at a plate-lunch counter or saimin stand, and evenings at home or at the beach. The weather is warm and even all year, with showers more frequent in winter.

Saimin is the dish to seek out in Līhuʻe: a noodle soup whose name comes from Cantonese, Hawaii's own contribution to noodle cooking. Hamura's Saimin Stand, opened in 1952 in a converted army barracks on Kress Street, has served it for generations and won an "America's Classic" award from the James Beard Foundation; it also serves shave ice, the islands' classic sweet.

Beyond saimin, Līhuʻe eats like the rest of Hawaii. The plate lunch — two scoops of rice, macaroni salad and a main such as teriyaki beef, katsu chicken or kalua pork — is the everyday meal, poke, diced raw fish tossed in a sauce, is sold at markets, and Spam musubi is a standard snack. Luau feasts of kalua pig, poi and haupia, a coconut pudding, are staged for visitors on the grounds of the Kilohana estate.

Around the harbour at Nāwiliwili, restaurants and bars serve Mexican food and drinks by the water, and the shops of Kilohana sell gifts made by local artists.