Maui Time Line

2,000,000 BC Maui's first volcano rises from the depths of the ocean and appears above the surface of the waves.

1,000,000 BC Haleakalā breaks the surface. Flows from the two volcanoes join to form the island of Maui. They also connect with other volcanoes that later form the separate islands of Lānaʻi, Molokaʻi and Kahoʻolawe. Scientists refer to the giant prehistoric landmass, before the break-up, as "Maui Nui" or Big Maui.

450 AD The first Polynesian explorers from the Marquesas Islands discover Hawaiʻi, though recent archaeological evidence suggests a much earlier date. Settlement of the islands begins.

700 Waves of colonists from Tahiti arrive.

The succession of Maui kings:
Piʻilani (ruled during late 14th and early 15th centuries)
Kihaapiʻilani
Kamalālāwalu
Kauhiakama
Kalanikaumakaowākea
Lonohonuakini
Kaʻulāhea
Kekaulike
Kamehameha Nui
Kahekili

1778 Captain James Cook of England discovers Hawaiʻi for the Western world but never sets foot on Maui.

1787 Captain Jean-Francois de Galaup, Compte de La Perouse, becomes the first foreigner to step ashore on Maui, at Keoneʻōʻio in Mākena. The bay was later named after him. (In defiance of his orders, Perouse decided not to claim the island for the King of France.)

1790 Kamehameha the Great defeats King Kahekili and his Maui forces in ʻĪao Valley, bringing Maui into the united Hawaiian kingdom. The site of the Battle of ʻĪao is called Kepaniwai, which literally means "blocked waters." It is called so because the bodies of slain warriors were so numerous, it temporarily dammed the stream.

1802 Kamehameha the Great names Lāhaina the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom.

1819 Kamehameha the Great dies. His widow, Queen Kaʻahumanu, together with the new king, Liholiho (Kamehameha II) and Liholiho's birth mother Keōpūolani, defy the power of the priests, and the people topple the Hawaiian religion. It is also the year the first whaling ship, the Balena from New Bedford, Massachusetts, arrives in Lāhaina.

1823 The first New England missionaries arrive on Maui.

1825 The first of the battles between the whalers and missionaries erupts in Lāhaina when the whalers blamed the missionaries for preventing women from visiting the ships.

1828 Maui's first sugar mill begins operations.

1831 The first high school west of the Rocky Mountains, Lāhainaluna, is established on Maui.

1831 The Baldwin Mission House, the oldest surviving house on Maui, is built.

1834 The first newspaper in the Hawaiian language, Ka Lama Hawaiʻi, is run off the Lāhainaluna Seminary press on February 13.

1846 Whaling ship visits to Hawaiʻi peak with 596 arrivals. Of these, 429 anchor off Lāhaina and the rest in Honolulu Harbor.

1850 The capital of the Hawaiian nation is moved from Lāhaina to Honolulu.

1852 The first sugar plantation laborers begin to arrive from Kwangtung, China.

1866 The first leprosy patients are taken to Kalawao on Molokaʻi's Kalaupapa Peninsula on January 6.

1873 Father Damien is sent to Kalaupapa on Molokaʻi to work with leprosy patients. He succumbed to the disease in 1889, and in 1995, was declared by Pope John Paul II as among the "Blessed" and given the title "Servant of Humanity."

1877 C.H. Dickey establishes the first commercial telegraph system in Hawaiʻi, connecting two of his stores on Maui, on September 1. Soon after, a charter is granted to C.H. Dickey and C.H. Wallace for the Hawaiian Telegraph Company.

1879 The Kahului-Wailuku Railroad, running from Kahului to Pāʻia, opens on July 20. This is the first common rail carrier in Hawaiʻi.

1885 Japanese immigration to Maui begins. These immigrants and others became the foundation of Hawaiʻi's multi-ethnic society, the "melting pot of the Pacific."

1893 The constitutional Hawaiian monarchy is illegally overthrown by American settlers living in Hawaiʻi.

1903 Dwight Baldwin plants the first pineapple on Maui in Haʻikū.

1912 David Thomas Fleming plants 20 acres of pineapple at Honolua Ranch, where Kapalua Resort is today. Fleming also plants coffee, aloe, mango, avocado, citrus, lychee and macadamia nuts, but it is pineapple that eventually becomes a commercial crop.

1916 Haleakalā joins the U.S. national park system. In 1961, it becomes a national park in its own right.

1941 Pearl Harbor on the island of Oʻahu is bombed by Japan and martial law is declared in Hawaiʻi.

1946 The first resort on Maui, the Hotel Hāna-Maui, opens.

1959 Hawaiʻi becomes the 50th state of the United States.

1961 Kāʻanapali opens as Hawaiʻi's first master-planned resort.

1974 The first 9 holes of the Wailea Blue Course open, the beginning of what is today the master-planned Wailea Resort community.

1976 The Hōkūleʻa, a replica of an ancient Polynesian voyaging canoe, sets sail from Maui for Tahiti, recreating the ancestral journeys.

1993 President Bill Clinton signs a Congressional Resolution acknowledging illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.