The earliest Polynesian settlers of Hawaii came ashore around AD 500. Archaeologists disagree on exactly where these explorers came from, but artifacts indicate the first to arrive were from the Marquesas Islands. The next wave of settlers was from Tahiti and arrived around AD 1000. Unlike the Marquesans, who sparsely settled the tiny islands at the northwest end of the Hawaiian Islands, the Tahitians arrived in great numbers and settled each of the major islands in the Hawaiian chain. Though no one knows what set them on course for Hawaii, when they arrived in their great double-hulled canoes they were prepared to colonize a new land, bringing with them pigs, dogs, taro roots and other crop plants.

The Tahitian discovery of Hawaii may have been an accident, but subsequent journeys were not. They were highly skilled seafarers, using only the wind, stars and wave patterns to guide them. Yet, incredibly, they memorized their route over 2400 miles of open Pacific and repeated the journeys between Hawaii and Tahiti for centuries.

And what a story they must have brought back with them, because vast waves of Tahitians followed to pursue a new life in Hawaii. So great were the number of Tahitian migrations that Hawaii’s population probably reached a peak of approximately 250,000 by the year 1450. The voyages back and forth continued until around 1500, when all contact between Tahiti and Hawaii appears to have stopped.

On January 18, 1778, an event occurred on the islands that would change the life of Hawaiians in ways inconceivable at the time. On that day British explorer Captain James Cook sighted Hawaii while en route to the Pacific Northwest, in search of a possible ‘northwest passage’ between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Cook’s appearance was not only the first Western contact, it also marked the end of Hawaii’s 300 years of complete isolation following the end of the Tahitian voyages. Cook anchored on the Big Island, across the channel from Maui, and stayed long enough to refresh his food supplies before continuing his journey north.

Cook sighted Maui but never set foot on the island. The first Westerner to land on Maui was French explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, who sailed into Keoneʻoʻio Bay (now called La Perouse Bay) on Maui’s southern shore in 1786, traded with the Hawaiians and left after two days of peaceful contact.

After Captain Cook’s ships returned to England, news of his discovery quickly spread throughout Europe and America, opening the floodgates to an invasion of foreign explorers, traders, missionaries and fortune hunters.

By the 1820s Hawaii had become a critical link in the strengthening trade route between China and the US, with British, American, French and Russian traders all using Hawaii as a mid-Pacific stop for provisioning their ships.

The first whaling ship to stop in Maui was the Balena, which anchored at Lahaina in 1819. The crew was mostly New England Yankees with a sprinkling of Gay Head Indians and former slaves. As more ships arrived, men of all nationalities roamed Lahaina’s streets, most in their teens or twenties and ripe for adventure. Lahaina became a bustling port of call with shopkeepers catering to the whalers; saloons, brothels and hotels boomed.

Whaling brought big money to Maui and the dollars spread beyond its main port. Many Maui farmers got their start supplying the whaling ships with potatoes. Hawaiians themselves made good whalers, and sea captains gladly paid a $200 bond to the Hawaiian government for each Hawaiian sailor allowed to join their crew. Kamehameha IV even set up his own fleet of whaling ships that sailed under the Hawaiian flag.

Whaling in the Pacific peaked in the mid-19th century and quickly began to burn itself out. In a few short years, all but the most distant whaling grounds were being depleted and whalers were forced to go further afield to make their kills.

The last straw for the Pacific whaling industry came in 1871, when an early storm in the Arctic caught more than 30 ships by surprise, trapping them in ice floes above the Bering Strait. Although more than 1000 seamen were rescued, half of them Hawaiian, the fleet itself was lost.

Throughout the period of the monarchy, the ruling sovereigns of Hawaii fought off continual efforts on the part of European and American settlers to gain control of the kingdom.

In 1848, under pressure from foreigners who wanted to own land, a sweeping land-reform act known as the Great Mahele was instituted. This act allowed, for the first time, the ownership of land, which had previously been held exclusively by monarchs and chiefs. The chiefs had not owned the land in the Western sense but were caretakers of both the land and the commoners who lived and worked on the land, giving their monarchs a portion of the harvest in return for the right to stay.

The reforms of the Great Mahele had far-reaching implications. For foreigners, who had money to buy land, it meant greater economic and political power. For Hawaiians, who had little or no money, it meant a loss of land-based self-sufficiency and enforced entry into the low-wage labor market, primarily run by Westerners.

When King Kalakaua died in 1891, his sister ascended the throne. Queen Liliʻuokalani was a staunch supporter of her brother’s efforts to maintain Hawaiian independence.

In January 1893 Queen Liliʻuokalani was preparing to proclaim a new constitution to restore royal powers when a group of armed US businessmen occupied the Supreme Court and declared the monarchy to be overthrown. They announced a provisional government, led by Sanford B Dole, son of a pioneer missionary family.

After the monarchy’s overthrow, the new government leaders pushed hard for annexation by the US, believing that it would bring greater stability to the islands, and more profits to Caucasian-run businesses. Although US law required that any entity petitioning for annexation must have the backing of the majority of its citizens through a public vote, no such vote was held in Hawaii.

Throughout the 20th century numerous Hawaiian statehood bills were introduced in Congress, only to be shot down. One reason for this lack of support was racial prejudice against Hawaii’s multi-ethnic population. US congressmen from a still-segregated South were vocal in their belief that making Hawaii a state would open the doors to Asian immigration and the so-called Yellow Peril threat that was so rampant at the time. Others believed Hawaii’s labor unions were hotbeds of communism.

However, the fame of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in WWII went a long way toward reducing anti-Japanese sentiments. In March 1959 Congress voted again, this time admitting Hawaii into the Union. On August 21, President Eisenhower signed the admission bill that officially deemed Hawaii the 50th state.

Statehood had an immediate economic impact on Hawaii, most notably in boosting the tourism industry. Coupled with the advent of jet airplanes, which could transport thousands of people per week to the islands, tourism exploded, creating a hotel-building boom previously unmatched in the US. Tourism became the largest industry on Maui.

Its growth spurt hasn’t always been pretty. In the mid-1970s developers pounced on the beachside village of Kihei with such intensity that it became a rallying call for antidevelopment forces throughout Hawaii. Recent years have been spent catching up with Kihei’s rampant growth, mitigating traffic and creating plans intent on sparing the rest of Maui from willy-nilly building sprees.

In 2011 then-Governor Neil Abercrombie signed into law a bill recognizing Native Hawaiians as the state’s only indigenous people and establishing a commission to create and maintain a list of qualifying Native Hawaiians. For those who qualifed, this was the first step toward eventual self-governance.