Hawaii’s smallest island has no traffic lights, one small town, and over 700 wild cats

Lanai’s wild side goes way beyond the beach

Lanai sits nine miles off Maui’s coast, but it feels like a different world.

The whole island covers about 140 square miles and holds around 3,400 people, nearly all of them in one small town. No traffic lights.

Thirty miles of paved road. Hundreds of miles of dirt.

What fills the rest of the island is the kind of thing you don’t expect from Hawaii, and the cats are only the beginning.

The pineapple island that stopped growing pineapples

In 1922, James Dole bought Lanai and turned it into one of the largest pineapple plantations in the world. Workers came from Japan, the Philippines, Portugal and elsewhere, and Dole built an entire town to house them.

That town became Lanai City. The last big pineapple harvest happened in 1992, ending 70 years of island-wide cultivation.

What stayed behind was the community, the plantation-era homes, and a town that looks and feels like it belongs to a different era of Hawaii.

Walk the whole town in about an hour

The center of Lanai City is Dole Park, a grassy square shaded by tall Cook pine trees with small locally owned shops, art galleries and casual restaurants wrapped around its edges. You can walk the whole town in about an hour.

Stop in at the Lanai Art Center to browse local work, or head into the Lanai Culture and Heritage Center, housed in the old Dole Administration Building, for exhibits on the island’s geological and cultural past.

Nothing here is rushed, and that’s the point.

Hulopoe Beach sits inside a protected marine sanctuary

Hulopoe Beach on the south shore is a white sand crescent inside a Marine Life Conservation District, which means the coral reefs and tropical fish here get strong legal protection.

The snorkeling is good because the water stays clear and calm.

On the eastern side of the bay, volcanic rock has carved out tide pools holding hermit crabs, sea stars and small fish. Spinner dolphins regularly leap in the bay.

Sea turtles sometimes pull onto the sand to rest. Picnic tables, restrooms and showers are all on site.

An 80-foot rock with a legend older than the island’s hotels

Between Manele Bay and Hulopoe Bay, a column of red rock rises 80 feet straight out of the ocean. Hawaiians call it Puu Pehe, though most visitors know it as Sweetheart Rock.

The legend goes that a warrior named Makakehau buried his beloved Pehe on top after she was swept away in a storm.

The trail from Hulopoe Beach to the overlook takes 15 to 20 minutes along sea cliffs, and the views stretch all the way to Maui and Kahoolawe. Sunrise and sunset hit the red rock hard.

The Garden of the Gods looks nothing like Hawaii

About 45 minutes from Lanai City by dirt road, on the island’s northwest side, boulders in shades of red, orange and purple sit scattered across a flat, barren landscape called Keahiakawelo.

Hawaiian tradition says a priest from Lanai named Kawelo burned every piece of vegetation in the area to win a fire-keeping contest against a priest from Molokai, which is why the land stays bare. On clear days you can see Molokai across the channel.

At sunset, the rock colors shift fast enough to watch.

590 acres of Hawaii’s rarest forest, mostly forgotten

The Kanepuu Preserve, protected by the Nature Conservancy, holds the largest remaining native dryland forest in Hawaii. This kind of forest once spread across the dry lowlands of the Hawaiian Islands.

Now most of it is gone, and 590 acres of it survive here.

More than 45 native plant species grow in the preserve, including endangered Hawaiian gardenia and native sandalwood.

A short self-guided loop trail with illustrated signs by a local Lanai artist walks you through the plants and explains their cultural history. Entry is free, about 20 minutes northwest of town.

A WWII barge still sits grounded off the north shore

Kaiolohia, known as Shipwreck Beach, runs eight miles along Lanai’s north shore.

Strong currents and shallow reefs have pulled ships onto the bottom here for centuries, and the most visible one is still above the surface.

The YOGN-42, a World War II ferro-cement fuel barge, was intentionally beached around 1950 and sits offshore where you can see it plainly.

About 200 yards inland, large boulders hold ancient Hawaiian rock carvings, including figures sometimes called the Bird Man of Lanai. The water is too rough to swim, but the walking is long and solitary.

The Munro Trail climbs to where you can see five islands

The Munro Trail runs 12.8 miles of dirt road up through upland forest to Lanaihale, the highest point on the island at 3,370 feet.

The trail is named for George Munro, a New Zealand naturalist who arrived in 1890 and planted the Cook pines that still line much of the route.

Along the way you’ll pass through forests of ohia lehua, ironwood and eucalyptus, with canyon views dropping into Maunalei Gulch. On a clear day, you can see up to five neighboring Hawaiian islands from the summit.

Rain makes the road impassable, so check conditions before you go.

A quieter ridge walk above Lanai City

The Koloiki Ridge Trail covers about five miles through pine forests and open meadows above town. It climbs along a high ridge with views of the Pacific and the islands of Molokai and Maui laid out below.

The trail connects to the Munro Trail system, so you can extend the outing if you want more.

No four-wheel-drive vehicle is needed to reach the trailhead, which puts it in reach without the logistics that most of Lanai’s backcountry demands.

Fewer people hike it than the Munro Trail, and you’ll feel that difference quickly.

King Kamehameha I used to vacation here

On Lanai’s southern coast, Kaunolu Village is a National Historic Landmark designated in 1962 and one of the best-preserved ancient Hawaiian archaeological sites in the state.

Stone walls, house platforms, the sacred Halulu Heiau temple and petroglyphs carved into rock have survived here in a way they haven’t in most of Hawaii.

The village was a thriving fishing community and a favorite retreat of King Kamehameha I. Just nearby, Kahekili’s Leap marks the cliff where warriors proved their courage by jumping into the water below.

You’ll need a four-wheel-drive vehicle and about 45 minutes from town.

More than 700 cats live in a four-acre outdoor enclosure

The Lanai Cat Sanctuary is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on four acres just outside Lanai City, and it’s home to more than 700 rescued cats roaming a large outdoor enclosure.

It started with street cat sterilization efforts in 2004 and has since rescued more than 3,000 animals.

Housing feral cats here also protects Lanai’s native ground-nesting seabirds, which feral cats elsewhere on the island would otherwise hunt.

You can walk through, pet the cats and spend as much time as you want at no charge, though donations keep the place running. The sanctuary is open daily.

Getting to Lanai City, Hawaii

To get here from Maui, the Expeditions ferry runs from Maalaea Harbor to Manele Small Boat Harbor, with multiple crossings daily, taking about 45 minutes.

Small inter-island airlines also fly into Lanai Airport from Honolulu and Maui. Once you land, there’s no public transit, but a shuttle runs between the airport, harbor and town.

Lanai City sits at about 1,700 feet, so pack a light jacket since temperatures run cooler than the coast. For most of what’s worth seeing outside of town, a four-wheel-drive vehicle isn’t optional.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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