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Maui Information
| Hana |
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Hana
Elevation: 100 feet
Current Real Estate Stats
 One popular slogan adorning tourist t-shirts proclaims, "I survived the road to Hana." Tourists heading out that way are frequently advised that the "journey is the thing." Often, they rush through the winding road, get to the end of their motion sickness-inducing trek, and stand around complaining that there's no "there" there.
The thing about Hana is it's a real place. People live, work and die there, and they really are not into the tourist thing much. The beauty and tranquility of the place is real, the history is acknowledged and appreciated but not made much of, and the sense of family, community and neighborliness is not a put-on show.
During the 1920s Hana was the urban center for an estimated population of 12,000 people living in small villages along this part of the coast. When the sugar mills closed down after World War II, many folks had to leave to find other work. Around that time, a San Francisco entrepreneur, Paul Fagan, bought plantation land and set a herd of Hereford cows to graze in the old cane fields. His ranch is still there and so are the cows. Fagan also opened one of Hawaii's earliest non-Waikiki resorts. Both the ranch and the resort, now called Hotel Hana-Maui, are Hana's economic backbone.
Hana gets more than 90 inches of rain every year -- more than enough to keep it lush and green. Bamboo, fruit trees, wild gingers and other tropical flowers and ferns abound along the road to Hana, as do the freshets and towering waterfalls all along the ravines and cliffs.
The modern, cliff-hugging road, which wends its way through more than 600 twists and turns, over 54 mostly one-lane bridges that mark the streams and ravines, and through lush ginger-scented rain forests, fern-covered rugged cliffs and bamboo groves, was opened in the late 1920s. It was pretty much "unimproved" for a long time. Now the road's mostly graded and paved highway and it isn't such a trick to survive it. |
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Information is believed to be accurate but should not be relied upon without verification.
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