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This oceanfront thoroughfare is Lahaina’s main street. Lined with all the trappings of a vacation town, from souvenir shops and activity reservation outlets to a plethora of bars and restaurants, Front Street bustles day and night. It is the site of major festivals throughout the year (A Taste of Lahaina in September, Halloween’s Mardi Gras of the Pacific in October, the International Festival of Canoes in May) and a continual stream of smaller events, including the weekly Friday Night is Art Night. (see Front Street, Lahaina)

Pioneer Inn, Front Street

This brightly painted building illustrates the influence of Chinese immigrants to the commerce of Maui. Brought in great numbers to work on sugar plantations, it was not long before the Chinese settlers had enough money to leave the employment of others and set up their own businesses. The Wing Ho Temple, built by a Chinese fraternal society as a social hall, now preserves the history and contributions of Maui’s Chinese community through its exhibits.

A beautifully preserved coral and fieldstone building. Its exterior hasn’t changed a jot since its completion in 1834, when it was built for ships’ officers and their families as a respite from the “heat and unpleasant dust of the market.” It now houses the Lahaina Restoration Foundation.

This mid-19th century structure served as Lahaina’s prison, the inmates largely made up of ship deserters, drunks, reckless horse riders, and violators of the Sabbath. Built by convicts in the 1850s from blocks of stone salvaged from the old fort, the prison had a catwalk for use by an armed guard and wooden cells to hold the criminals.

Immortalized by American author James Michener in his novelHawai’i , this church was built in the early 1800s and, over its 200-year history, has been destroyed three times – twice by windstorms and once by fire. The building was repositioned during its last reconstruction in 1951 and has been standing sturdily since. Still known largely as Waine’e Church, it was officially renamed Waiola (“water of life”) in 1953.

The first Christian cemetery in Hawai’i. Many Hawaiian ali’i (royals) are buried here, including King Kaumuali’i, the last king of Kaua’i; Queen Keōpūolani, the highest Hawaiian ali’i ever baptized as a Protestant; and Princess Nahienaena, sister of Kings Kamehameha II and III.

Although the Catholic priests who arrived on Maui in 1846 were unpopular with the established Protestant leaders, Catholicism quickly became the island’s largest denomination as a result of the influx of Catholic laborers from Portugal and the Philippines. The church was built in 1856 and enlarged in 1858. The beautiful structure, which now stands at Waine’e and Dickenson streets, is a replica of the 1858 church.

On the campus of Lahainaluna, the oldest high school west of the Rockies, this hillside building holds the history of the written word in Hawai’i. Until the mid-1800s, Hawaiian was a spoken language only. In order to spread the Bible’s word, Protestant missionaries used English letters to transliterate Hawaiian, and they brought a printing press with them specifically for the task. A replica of the press and the pages it printed are displayed here.

Railroads traversed the landscape of Hawai’i during the plantation era, with steam locomotives pulling trains that hauled sugar cane from the fields to the mills. The first of these in West Maui began operating around 1890 and continued until 1950, when it was replaced by trucks. The Lahaina Kā’anapali & Pacific Railroad (affectionately called the Sugar Train) is an authentic reproduction of the trains that ran through the fields of West Maui, but these days it carries passengers instead of sugar. Its six-mile route runs between Lahaina and Kā’anapali, crossing a curved wooden viaduct that offers panoramic views.

This three-story pagoda sits at the outer edge of Lahaina town. In its courtyard stands a giant statue of Buddha, the largest outside Japan, placed in commemoration of the 1868 arrival of the first Japanese immigrants to Maui. The serene grounds are open to the public; the buildings are not.