Places on Kauai: The Kauai Museum

Basic Information

• Name: The Kauai Museum
• Where: Lihue, Hawaii
• Founded: 1960
• Hours: Mon-Sat. from 9AM-4PM
• Cost: $15 general admission
• More Information: Kauai Museum website

Directions

The Kauai Museum is located in the main Kauai city of Lihue.  From the airport take Kapule Highway to Rice Street.  At Rice Street take a right and the Kauai Museum will be visible on the right side of the road.

Parking

Behind the Kauai Museum there is a large parking lot that can get very busy since it is a shared parking lot with a number of government buildings and businesses.  However, there shouldn’t be any problems finding a place to park.

Narrative

On the Hawaiian Island of Oahu there are many great museums to check out.  On the neighbor island of Kauai this is not the case.  The only museum of some size on the island to check out is the Kauai Museum in downtown Lihue:

The museum is housed in the historic Albert Spencer Wilcox Memorial Building that was built as a library in 1924 with funds from Wilcox’s widow.  Wilcox was a prominent businessman and politician on Kauai:

In 1960 the Rice Building was built adjacent to the library and was used to house Kauai’s first museum, the museum.  The building was named after another local businessman and politician William Hyde Rice.  By 1969 the state of Hawaii built a new library building which allowed the Wilcox Building to be converted into a wing of the Kauai Museum.  Inside of the museum there are a number of displays that describes the history of Kauai.  However, most of the displays are just a lot of random items displayed in various rooms:

I personally found the museum to not be very compelling at bringing the island’s history alive to visitors.  With that said I did find the workers at the museum to be very nice and knowledgable when asked questions.

After checking out the Kauai Museum it is worth walking over and checking out the adjacent park which appears to have more chickens than visitors:

In the park there is a small Japanese garden paying tribute to Japanese immigrants that moved to Kauai:

There is also a monument to Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal:

Rizal was executed by the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines in 1896 and never stepped foot on Kauai.  It seems odd to have a memorial to someone with no connection to Kauai, but it is likely the local Filipino-American community built the memorial.  Across the street from the park the historic County Building can be seen:

Finally here is a look from the park back towards the Kauai Museum’s Wilcox Building:

Conclusion

For those that have been to the Bishop Museum on Oahu, the Kauai Museum is going to be a huge letdown.  It is just much smaller and the exhibits far less compelling than the ones at the Bishop Museum.  If you find yourself experiencing a bad weather day during a visit to Kauai than the museum is worth checking out, if not there are far more interesting sights to spend your time seeing on Kauai and save a museum tour for whenever you make a visit to Oahu.