Mā‘alaea sits on the southern coast of the isthmus separating West Maui from the island’s Central Valley.

For more than a millennium, Mā‘alaea has been a crossroads, a landing place for Hawaiian kings and armies, and in time, whalers and sailing ships.

Highways follow the ancient trails that once branched north to Wailuku (today Maui County’s governmental seat), west to Lahaina, and south to what are now the towns of Kīhei and Wailea.

The name Mā‘alaea comes from the Hawaiian word ‘alae, the iron oxide from volcanic eruptions that gives the region its iron-rich red earth.

For the region’s earliest inhabitants, Kapoli Spring, near the present-day harbor, was the main source of fresh water in this sometimes arid land.

After the 1893 overthrow of Hawai‘i’s last queen, Liliuokalani, westerners turned former kingdom lands into vast sugar and pineapple plantations.

Many of the Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and other immigrants they recruited to work in the fields remained in the islands after finishing their contracts, contributing to Hawai‘i’s multicultural society.

The majority of crews on Hawai‘i’s fishing boats were of Japanese ancestry; in Mā‘alaea, they carved the likeness of the Shinto god Ebisu-Sama, the protective deity of fishermen.

In 1929, a World War I Navy pilot named Stanley C. Kennedy constructed Maui’s first airport: a 1,500-foot-long landing field in Mā‘alaea for his newly formed Inter-Island Airways.

The years leading up to World War II brought surfers to Mā‘alaea Bay, enticed by its irresistible waves.

In the predominantly Japanese village of Mā‘alaea, Keizo Ban, manager of Kīhei General Store, was the first to be arrested.

As the island’s fledgling visitor industry emerged, so did Mā‘alaea small-boat harbor as a launching place for recreational vessels and commercial fishing boats.

By the 1980s, big ideas were in the air for the village and its environs: a national marine sanctuary for humpback whales, a much-debated harbor expansion, and commercial centers.

In 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Oceans Act that established the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.

The MCA ceased activities in 2016, and was replaced the next year by the newly incorporated Mā‘alaea Village Association, whose purpose, in part, is to protect the region’s environment, from its upland watershed to its coastal waters.