Saturday, September 5, 2015

Big Island, Hawaii, USA

 

 

Hawaiʻi is the largest island located in the U.S. state of Hawaii. It is the largest and the southeastern-most of the Hawaiian islands, a chain of volcanic islands in the North Pacific Ocean. With an area of 4,028 square miles (10,430 km2), it is larger than all of the other islands in the archipelago combined and is the largest island in the United States. The island is often referred to as the Island of Hawaiʻi, the Big Island, or Hawaiʻi Island to distinguish between the island and the state. It is coterminous with Hawaiʻi County and includes the Hilo Micropolitan Statistical Area.


History

Hawaiʻi is said to have been named for Hawaiʻiloa, the legendary Polynesian navigator who first discovered it. Other accounts attribute the name to the legendary realm of Hawaiki, a place from which the Polynesian people are said to have originated , the place where they go in the afterlife, the realm of the gods and goddesses. Captain James Cook, the English explorer and navigator who was the captain of the first European expedition that discovered the Hawaiian Islands (obviously Polynesians had discovered them long before), called them the "Sandwich Islands" after his patron, the Earl of Sandwich. Cook was killed on the Big Island at Kealakekua Bay on February 14, 1779, in a mêlée which followed the theft of a ship's boat.
Hawaiʻi was the home island of Paiʻea Kamehameha, later known as Kamehameha the Great. Kamehameha united most of the Hawaiian islands under his rule in 1795, after several years of war, and gave the kingdom and the island chain the name of his native island.
 


Places of interest

  • Akaka Falls; one of the taller waterfalls on the island.
  • Amy B. H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden houses many endangered endemic plants.
  • East Hawaiʻi Cultural Center
  • Hawaiʻi Tropical Botanical Garden
  • Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park; comprising the active volcanoes Kīlauea and Mauna Loa
  • Huliheʻe Palace; a royal palace in Kailua-Kona
  • ʻImiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaiʻi in Hilo
  • Ka Lae, the southernmost point in the United States
  • Laupahoehoe Train Museum
  • Lyman House Memorial Museum in Hilo
  • Manuka State Wayside Park
  • Mauna Kea Observatory; Mauna Kea Observatories
  • Nani Mau Gardens
  • Onizuka Center for International Astronomy
  • Onizuka Space Center; museum dedicated to the memory of Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka located in Kona's Keahole Airport
  • Pacific Tsunami Museum overlooking Hilo Bay
  • Pana'ewa Rainforest Zoo in Hilo
  • Pua Mau Place Arboretum and Botanical Garden
  • Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park
  • Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site, the site of one of the most significant heiau in Hawaii.
  • Rainbow Falls State Park
  • Sadie Seymour Botanical Gardens
  • Umauma Falls
  • University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Botanical Gardens
  • World Botanical Gardens
  • Waipiʻo Valley
  • Wao Kele o Puna
 
 

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