Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
• Luakini Street paralleling Front Street is a one-way street, with traffic running
north to south on the south end of Dickenson, and south to north on the north end
of Dickenson. Confused? Better to just avoid the street entirely.
• Allow yourself enough time. Parking may take 5-10 minutes; factor this in when
scheduling your day.
Masters' Reading Room
Immediately next door to the Baldwin House is the
Masters' Reading Room,
which was
originally a missionaries' storeroom, but was converted to an officers' club for ship's cap-
tains in 1834. It was restored to its original condition in 1970, and the downstairs is used
for a gift and art gallery associated with the Village Gallery up the road. Uniquely con-
structed of coral and stone, these two venerable buildings constitute the oldest standing
Western structures on Maui.
MISSIONARIES: “CAME TO DO GOOD AND STAYED TO DO
WELL”
All around West Maui, from the Baldwin House in downtown Lahaina to the fallow
fields of former sugar plantations, island visitors are surrounded by signs of the mis-
sionary influence.
The first Protestant missionaries arrived from New England in 1820 aboard a
wooden brig named
Thaddeus
after a tortuous journey around Cape Horn. Led by
Hiram Bingham (whose grandson would go on to “discover” Machu Picchu), the
original missionaries immediately set to work crafting a moral compass for the way-
ward Hawaiians, who had abandoned their centuries-old religious system only a
year earlier. A written form of the Hawaiian language was created, Bibles were prin-
ted, and within a few years a number of the Hawaiian nobility were converted to
Christianity.
It didn't take long for the missionaries to start having children. In the same year
of their arrival, the first European child was born in the Hawaiian Islands. The in-
troduction of progeny would not only alter the social structure of the mission, but
change the political and economic course of the kingdom of Hawai'i. Missionaries
were forced to cope with the realities of raising children in faraway Hawai'i. Mis-
sion wages were woefully inadequate, a system of education was nonexistent, and
