Black Rat
The agile roof-climbing rat of ports and warm cities differs sharply from its heavier, burrowing relative.
Hawaii, United States: places and wildlife
Browse the published Explore collection for Hawaii, United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Common House Gecko
A human-transported tropical gecko that patrols walls beneath lights and announces itself with surprisingly audible chirps.
Nēnē
Evolved from Canada goose ancestors, nēnē traded strongly webbed feet for better walking across Hawaiian lava and upland grasslands.
ʻIʻiwi
A long curved bill and brilliant scarlet body identify this endemic honeycreeper, now pushed upslope as mosquitoes carry avian malaria.
Hawaiian Monk Seal
Hawaiian monk seals forage across deep reefs but spend roughly a third of their time ashore, where undisturbed rest is essential.
ʻŌpeʻapeʻa
This solitary, tree-roosting bat is Hawaiʻi’s only living native terrestrial mammal and an insect hunter most often detected after sunset.
Kamehameha Butterfly
This orange-and-brown butterfly occurs only in Hawaiʻi, where its caterpillars depend primarily on native māmaki and related nettle-family plants.
Humpback Whale
Knobbed head, extraordinarily long flippers, and deeply notched tail flukes identify a whale that migrates between feeding and breeding seas.
Bishop Museum
Hawaiʻi’s largest museum places Hawaiian and Pacific histories beside active natural-science research, without separating cultural knowledge from the islands that shaped it.
Honolulu Museum of Art
Arcaded courtyards and intimate galleries connect exceptional Asian and Pacific holdings with European, American, and contemporary art made in and beyond Hawaiʻi.
Capitol Modern
Capitol Modern presents changing exhibitions from Hawaiʻi’s artists and the state collection inside the former Armed Services YMCA, directly beside the Capitol district.
Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design
Shangri La combines a 1930s Honolulu residence with Islamic art, architectural fragments, gardens, and contemporary commissions overlooking the Pacific.
Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum
Historic Hangars 37 and 79 hold aircraft, engines, personal stories, and visible battle damage on Ford Island, inside the active Pearl Harbor military environment.
Pacific Fleet Submarine Museum
The USS Bowfin, launched one year after the Pearl Harbor attack, anchors a museum about American submarine warfare, technology, crews, and the Pacific campaign.
Lyman Museum and Mission House
The Lyman Museum joins volcanic geology, shells, ecosystems, cultural history, and a restored 1839 mission house in central Hilo.
Kauaʻi Museum
Kauaʻi Museum focuses tightly on the island group rather than compressing all of Hawaiʻi into one narrative.
Hale Hōʻikeʻike at the Bailey House
Hale Hōʻikeʻike presents Maui artifacts, photographs, maps, surfboards, paintings, and archival material in the 1833 Bailey House and its grounds.
Grove Farm Homestead Museum
Grove Farm preserves the Wilcox family home, furnishings, offices, gardens, and working landscape associated with Kauaʻi’s sugar economy.
Kona Coffee Living History Farm
This living-history farm uses an intact farmhouse, coffee orchard, mill, drying deck, garden, and daily demonstrations to interpret family-scale Kona coffee production.
Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum
The Sugar Museum documents plantation agriculture, irrigation, milling, labor, immigration, camps, and community life beside the former Puʻunēnē mill.
ʻIolani Palace
Built for King Kalākaua and Queen Kapiʻolani, ʻIolani Palace is the only official royal residence in the United States and a central place for understanding the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Pearl Harbor National Memorial
The memorial’s museums, waterfront, remembrance circle, and USS Arizona program interpret the attack on Oʻahu and its consequences through artifacts, testimony, strategy, and named lives.
Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park
Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau preserves temple platforms, fishponds, carved kiʻi, royal grounds, and the refuge protected by the massive Great Wall.
Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historic Site
Puʻukoholā Heiau was built in the early 1790s as Kamehameha consolidated power, using an immense dry-laid stone platform above Kawaihae Bay.
Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park
Kaloko-Honokōhau protects two major fishponds, fishtrap engineering, house sites, petroglyphs, wetlands, reef, and trails across young lava north of Kona.
Lapakahi State Historical Park
Lapakahi’s self-guided loop crosses the remains of a partially restored Hawaiian coastal settlement in North Kohala.
Pāʻulaʻula State Historic Site
Pāʻulaʻula preserves the earth-and-stone outline of an early nineteenth-century fort near the Waimea River, long labeled “Russian Fort Elizabeth.”
Queen Emma Summer Palace
Hānaiakamalama served as a mountain retreat for Queen Emma, King Kamehameha IV, and their son Prince Albert.
Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives
The site preserves the 1821 Mission House, Chamberlain House, reconstructed printing office, archives, and grounds beside Kawaiahaʻo Church.
Washington Place
Washington Place was the private home of Queen Liliʻuokalani and later Hawaiʻi’s official governor’s residence.
Kealakekua Bay State Historical Park
Kealakekua Bay was a major Hawaiian religious and political center long before Captain James Cook arrived, and its steep shores still hold layered histories.
Puʻuloa Petroglyphs
Puʻuloa preserves an extraordinary concentration of cupules, human figures, geometric forms, and family-associated marks cut into pāhoehoe lava.
Puakō Petroglyph Archaeological Preserve
The Puakō preserve contains one of Hawaiʻi Island’s largest concentrations of petroglyphs, including human forms, family groups, circles, and historic-era motifs.
Waikōloa Petroglyph Preserve
The Waikōloa petroglyph field preserves human figures, dots, lines, footprints, and historic inscriptions on exposed pāhoehoe near the coast.
Piʻilanihale Heiau
Piʻilanihale, among the largest heiau in Polynesia, occupies a broad terraced platform inside Kahanu Garden near Hāna.
Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park
The park protects the summits and rift landscapes of Kīlauea and Mauna Loa, along with rainforest, lava desert, petroglyphs, coastal sites, and Native Hawaiian cultural places.
Haleakalā National Park
Haleakalā National Park spans the summit depression, cinder cones, alpine shrublands, cloud forest, waterfalls, and the coastal Kīpahulu district.
Waimea Canyon State Park
Waimea Canyon exposes layered lava flows and immense erosion along the island’s western interior, with overlooks that change minute by minute under moving cloud.
Kōkeʻe State Park
Kōkeʻe protects upland forest and a dense trail network above Waimea Canyon and the Nā Pali valleys.
Nā Pali Coast State Wilderness Park
Nā Pali’s cliffs, beaches, hanging valleys, waterfalls, and old agricultural landscapes form one of Hawaiʻi’s most dramatic and logistically demanding coasts.
Polihale State Park
Polihale feels remote because the final unpaved road and broad dunes separate it from the island’s busier beaches.
Wailua River State Park
The Wailua River corridor joins water travel, royal and religious sites, wet forest, Opaekaʻa Falls, and river recreation on Kauaʻi’s east side.
ʻĪao Valley State Monument
ʻĪao Stream and steep green walls create one of Maui’s most recognizable interiors, centered visually on Kukaʻemoku, often called the ʻĪao Needle.
ʻAkaka Falls State Park
ʻAkaka Falls plunges from Kolekole Stream into an amphitheater cut through the lush Hāmākua coast.
Hāpuna Beach State Recreation Area
Hāpuna’s long crescent, clear water, lava headlands, and open horizon make it a classic Kohala beach, but conditions range from calm swimming to powerful shorebreak.
Kaʻena Point Natural Area Reserve
Kaʻena Point forms Oʻahu’s wild northwestern tip, reached by exposed coastal tracks from Mokulēʻia or Yokohama Bay.
Lēʻahi (Diamond Head)
Lēʻahi formed during a brief explosive eruption that built a broad tuff ring above today’s Waikīkī shoreline.
Maunakea Visitor Information Station
The visitor station sits around 9,200 feet on Maunakea, below the summit observatories and above much of the island’s cloud layer.