"Pai" in Hawaiian means noisy, and Paia was an appropriate name for this once small sugar town gone surfer/hippy. The current Paia was founded sometime in the 1890's by merchants looking to compete with other stores on Maui. However, the Paia known today was not the Paia in the 1800's.
Originally, Paia was a collection of homes for the sugar workers, otherwise known as camps. These camps were located up above the present day Paia. All that remains of them now are some side walks and a few trees.

The Lower Paia area sprung up after Upper Paia was built to meet the social and economical demands of the sugar workers. In the 1930's Lower Paia was a bustling little store town with theaters, schools, and hospitals for the large plantation worker population further up the hill.
Over the years the sugar industry became less labor intensive with the discovery of burning the cane and more advanced mechanics. Gradually the need for labor decreased, and the need for trained machine operators grew. Although some of the sugar workers learned to use the machines, the need wasn't great, and most of the workers lost their jobs. The Upper Paia town was pretty much abandoned with just a few families still living there.
Without the population of sugar workers to support it, Lower Paia was forced touse other means to make money. About that time the popularity of becoming a hippy was in the full, so Paia became a sort of hippy town. Various shops sprung up in the town, along with stores to support the growing population of surfers that had discovered the north shore. In a short time the once sugar town had become the new age hippy central of Maui. Small boutiques selling their interesting selection of clothes line Hana highway going through Paia and small resturants such as Charlie's, a breakfast and lunch place with a great dane mascot, and the two cafes in Paia's one intersection are a gathering place for local hippies and surfers.
The collection of mismatched store front awnings and irregular concrete sidewalks was appealing to the avergae Maui tourist and now most visitors to Maui spend at least an hour walking the streets of Paia, looking in all the strange stores and occasionally stopping in a cafe for a coffee.
The words quaint, old fashoined, funny little town, and weird are how tourists seem to describe Paia. Because of this, Paia now gets most of its commerce and buisness from tourists on Maui.Paia has recently been getting a couple of imporovements to preserve its image because of the tourist attetion it has been getting recently. Painted signs are on the sides of the three roads entering Paia are evidence of this, as well as a parking lot to the Baldwin side of Paia. With all this attention, hopefully more people will begin to respect Paia's past and help preserve this twon for future generations to come.


Here are a couple more interesting pages about more detailed sights and information in Paia. Perhaps you are there one morning and want to come back for dinner, we'll help you decide with some more in depth pages.