Koloa Heritage Trail Information

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Ka Ala Hele Waiwai Hooilina o Koloa, or the Koloa Heritage Trail, is a 14-stop, self-guided 10-mile tour of the Koloa and Poipu area’s most important cultural, historical and geological sites, with descriptive plaques that explain each spot’s significance.

Koloa is a historic South Shore area, home to Hawaii’s first commercial sugar plantation. In the mid 1800’s, sugar replaced the whaling industry to become the principal industry of Hawaii. As a result of the sugar boom, approximately 350,000 immigrants from around the world came to Hawaii to work in the sugar plantations. Although tourism supplanted sugar as Hawaii’s major industry (Kauai’s last sugar mill closed in 1995), the legacy of the era lives on in the unique ethnic diversity of Hawaii’s people today.

Beyond the shower tree in the center of Old Koloa Town you’ll discover the Sugar Monument, just one of the stops on the Koloa Heritage Trail. This circular concrete sculpture suggesting a millstone holds a bronze sculpture depicting the eight principal ethnic groups that brought the sugar industry to life (Hawaiian, Caucasian, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Filipino). The sculpture opens up to face the remnants of the Koloa sugar mill’s stone chimney, built in 1841.

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