Utulei or ʻUtulei is a village in Maoputasi County, in the Eastern District of Tutuila, the main island of American Samoa.

[1][2][3] Utulei is the site of many local landmarks: The A. P. Lutali Executive Office Building, which is next to the Feleti Barstow Library; paved roads that wind up to a former cablecar terminal on Solo Hill; the governor's mansion, which sits on Mauga o Alii, overlooking the entrance to Goat's Island, and the lieutenant governor's residence directly downhill from it; the Lee Auditorium, built in 1962; American Samoa's television studios, known as the Michael J. Kirwan Educational Television Center; and the Rainmaker Hotel (a portion of which is now known as Sadie's Hotel).

[10] Utulei is by tradition considered distinct from Fagatogo because it is the site of Maota o Tanumaleu, the residence of the High Chief Afoafouvale (also known as the Le Aloalii).

[12][13] During World War II, the population of the village of Utulei, around 700 inhabitants, was almost entirely displaced to make room for US military installations.

The inhabitants were told to move out of the village and into the hills, and bachelor officers’ quarters and other military support facilities were built there.

[18] In 1946, the Public Health Department of American Samoa found its facilities grossly inadequate for the post-war demand.

The old hospital, built in 1914, was too small and antiquated, and the U.S. Navy’s Medical Department could not be expected to provide all health services indefinitely.

These now-vacant Marine barracks were renovated and repurposed as a new 224-bed hospital—sometimes referred to as the Hospital of American Samoa — and included between 24 and 27 bassinets, along with a pharmacy and a dentistry.

[20]: 279–280 [22] In the late 1960s, questions about where American Sāmoa's capital should be arose again after Governor Owen Aspinall moved his office to Utulei.

After 18 months of legislation, development, and planning, Cheryl Ann Morales and her team officially opened the library to the public on April 15, 2000.

In 2009,then-Governor Togiola Tulafono designated Su’igaula o le Atuvasa as one of the venues for the 10th Festival of Pacific Arts, slated to be hosted by American Samoa in the summer of 2010.

A monument on the hill recalls a 1980 disaster in which a U.S. Navy airplane hit the cables and crashed into the Rainmaker Hotel, killing eight people.

The cableway had been one of the world's longest single-span aerial tramways; it had been constructed in 1965 to carry TV technicians to the transmitters at the top of Mount ʻAlava.

[24]: 167 The two-story Governor's House is a wooden colonial mansion atop Mauga o Ali'i (the chief's hill), uphill from a road across which is the entrance to the Rainmaker Hotel.

Matautu Ridge can be reached from Utulei by walking southeast on the main road past the oil tanks, keeping an eye out on the right-hand side for a small pump house immediately across the highway from a beach, and almost opposite two homes on the bayside of the street.

The ridge-top trail winds past various ancient archeological sites as well as World War II installations that were erected to fend off a potential Japanese invasion.

As of 2000, there were 60 commercial enterprises registered in the village, many of which are housed in the one- or two-story buildings on the southwest side of the shoreline roadway.

Smaller shops are found in predominantly residential communities upland from Samoana High School and the Executive Office Building.

[26]: 24-23 and 24-25 Diesel fuel is delivered monthly to Tutuila Island from Long Beach, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii, supplied by Marlex and Pacific Resources, Inc.

The fuel is carried by pipe from the dock area to an energy-storage tank farm operated by Marlex in the Punaoa Valley in Utulei.