Five Historic Places to Visit on Maui

Your Maui vacation can be even more fun if you know a little bit about the history of Hawaii, and here are five history-related places to visit on the island. Build your vacation plans around them or just check in when you're in a particular area. You'll find them all in tourist publications, or you can locate them through an Internet map search. Gift shops at Bailey House and the A&B Museum are a good place to buy souvenirs.

- Baldwin Home Museum, on Front Street in Lahaina, was home to some of the earliest and most important missionaries to Maui. Built in 1834, the Baldwin home is the oldest standing building in Lahaina. It was the home of the Reverend Dwight Baldwin, a medical missionary who lived there from 1838 to 1871. Dr. Baldwin was a key player in his time, and his son, Henry, grew up to found a sugar plantation that evolved into Alexander & Baldwin, Inc., one of the state's oldest companies and still a major landowner on Maui.

- Pioneer Inn, at Lahaina Harbor, was founded by George Freeland, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who tracked a criminal to Lahaina and decided to stay. Though Lahaina was not a tourist destination in those days, the town did need a hotel--visitors had to stay in private homes--and Freeland also built a service station and a movie theater. Only the hotel remains, a colorful spot with reasonable rates and an open-air bar downstairs. Be sure to read the rules mounted on the wall for hotel guests in the early days--they are a riot!

- Bailey House Museum, in Wailuku, was built in the 1830s as a girls' school where young Hawaiian girls could be trained in Christian learning and Western-style housekeeping so they would make appropriate wives for the men learning to be ministers at the Lahainaluna seminary on the west side of the island. The school was run for most of its existence by Edward Bailey and his wife Caroline. When the mission project ran out of money, the Baileys kept the school going by their own efforts. Mr. Bailey was quite a Renaissance man, and left a collection of paintings (some on display in the museum) that give us a glimpse of Maui more than a century ago.

- Kepaniwai Park, up the road from Bailey House on the way to beautiful Iao Valley, was the site of a decisive battle between the army of the Hawaii Island chief Kamehameha and Maui chief Kahekili about 1790. Kamehameha had the advantage, because he had Western armaments and sailors who knew how to use them, and he slaughtered so many of the Maui warriors that the Iao stream was clogged with their bodies. Hence the name "Kepaniwai," which means the "damming of the waters." Kamehameha went on to conquer all the Islands and unite them into one kingdom. Buildings scattered around the park are designed in the styles of various ethnic groups that have immigrated to Hawaii since Kamehameha's day.

- Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum, in Puunene, is located in one of the last remaining homes of what was a very large and bustling plantation town in the first half of the 20th century. It's across the street from the HC&S Sugar Mill, the last such mill in the Islands. This is where they turn all that green cane you saw as your plane was landing into raw sugar, which is then shipped to California to be refined into fine white sugar.

You might find raw sugar in a little brown package along with other sweeteners when you stop for refreshments; try it in your coffee, it's tasty. The museum contains many artifacts from plantation days, shows a video of the sugar processing that's going on right across the street, and gives you a good understanding of the importance of sugar in the history of Hawaii. And they give you a sample of raw sugar on your way out!