Puakō: an old Hawaiian beach community

Puakō sits on the shoreline between the Mauna Lani resort to the south and Kawaihae to the north, roughly two and a half miles of lava-rock coast with a few hundred households. The settlement here is ancient, established well before the resorts by people who fished and worked the ponds the community is named for.

The community has no through access: one long beach road, a handful of ocean access points, and a pace set entirely by residents rather than visitors. The petroglyph preserve along the Ala Kahakai trail holds one of the largest concentrations of rock art in the Hawaiian Islands, thousands of designs carved into the lava.

Living at Puakō means living low and close to the water. Historic beach houses that have passed down through families sit beside newer oceanfront homes, and nothing about the place has been manicured for visitors. The community is unpretentious and weathered, and it is genuinely local in a way the resorts cannot be.

Full-time residents keep Puakō alive year-round, and there are second homes here too. But unlike the resort communities, Puakō does not feel like a resort at all, and that is precisely what its residents love about it.

Puakō sits in Lava Zone 8, among the island’s lowest hazard designations. Homes are on the grid and permitted, though many of the oldest houses carry the character of their era, so the condition of each property is its own story. There is no resort-style association running the neighborhood; upkeep, improvements, and the beach road’s quirks are the community’s own business.