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Makawao

MAKAWAO

Elevation: 1700 feet

The majority of tourist-type guidebooks will tell you that Makawao is a "paniolo" (cowboy) town. Not any more. However, the vestiges of its history as a service center for the ranches, plantations and homesteads that surround the area remain in the local-style Dodge City look of the old buildings along Baldwin and Makawao Avenues and their retro-looking mates. The paniolo tradition continues, as well, in the theme for the Fourth-of- July parade that trundles through town from the Makawao Veterans Cemetery to the Eddie Tam Memorial Gym every year before the start of the annual Makawao Rodeo, the Maui Roping Club's biggest, drawing rodeo fanatics from all over the world.

Every once in a while, some brave soul will still venture through town on horseback. (Long-time townspeople still remember what an adventure it was to be walking through town. The advice used to be, "look down and lift your feet." Horses leave "horse apples." Enough said.)

Nowadays, if you were to make a survey of the shops and businesses lining Baldwin and Makawao Avenues, the two main arteries of the L-shaped town center (which is basically only one building wide on either side of the two streets), what you would find are fancy boutiques, art galleries and craft stores and excellent eateries. Tucked among more mundane things like real estate offices, hair stylists, a general store, bakery, bar, liquor shop, convenience store, and assorted financial wizards, are colorful shops and services for folks who are into alternative lifestyles and holistic medicine.

Some folks date the change from paniolo country to a more eclectic ambiance from the concert by Jimi Hendrix on July 30, 1970, before 800 people gathered in a field above Seabury Hall in Olinda. They say that concert, about a month before his death, marked a turning point.

Certainly, there was an influx of colorfully clad young people who wandered around the landscape irritating the neighbors by swiping fruit and going on little mushroom hunts in the cow pastures. Eventually some of these free-wheeling youth became semi-solid citizens, starting ephemeral businesses -- here one day and gone the next -- or buying land in the boonies together and becoming hardworking farmers of one sort or another. Many of them were artists as well and that had a profound effect on the town's character too.

The activity died down again, and for a while, it looked like Makawao was on its last legs. Once again, an influx of a more cosmopolitan and sophisticated sort of seeker, those looking to get away from all that 80's and 90's hustle-and-bustle and taking-care-of-business, came through, leaving their mark on the town. Old-timers have reached the point where nothing phases them any more...not even the thought of Makawao being a tourist destination.

Scattered through town, there's a public library, the town's post office, the upcountry branch office of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the town cop's headquarters, housed in a small old house on Baldwin Avenue. The banks all moved to Pukalani, alas, but there are ATM machines dotted around town.

Makawao is an interesting walking town, but you don't want to be near it around 7 in the morning or around 2 on most afternoons when parents and the drivers of buses full of the students attending Makawao Elementary School and the Montessori School on Baldwin Avenue, St. Joseph's School on Makawao Avenue, Seabury Hall on Olinda Road, Kalama Intermediate School on Makani Road and King Kekaulike High School on Kula Highway are all trying to get through the traffic snarl.

By 8 or so in the morning, the bike riders who have signed up for the ride-down-the-mountain tours reach Makawao. There's a steady stream of them all day long down the Haleakala Highway and the back roads of Olinda, through town and on down winding Baldwin Avenue to Paia town: lines of assorted-sized people riding the touring bikes more or less steadily and mostly in line, shepherded by a gesticulating guide. They are followed by big fat vans with trailers that all have signs saying they will pull over.

Besides these folks, there are also the independent bikers who hug the edges of the no-shoulder roads between the Haleakala National Park start-off and Paia, doing the tour on their own. And then, there are the bikers who are going the other way. It gets interesting, sometimes, at the three-way stop intersection where Baldwin Avenue meets Makawao Avenue and becomes Olinda Road.

The parking situation has been eased somewhat by the public parking lot off Makawao Avenue next to the public library, but you do have to time it right.

Last Updated: October 20, 2005 [Report Error]

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