Qualla: Coco Palms Resort

Coco Palms Resort: Introduction

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before Elvis Presley was married at its lagoon in the 1961 film Blue Hawaii, the land at the mouth of the Wailua River belonged to Hawaiian royalty. Deborah Kapule, the wife of Kauai's last independent monarch Kaumualii, kept a home here in the 1830s where travelers were always welcome. She called it hospitality. A century later, a hotel manager named Grace Buscher reinvented that tradition for tourists, and the Coco Palms Resort became the most famous hotel in Hawaii. Then Hurricane Iniki arrived in 1992, and the resort has stood in ruins ever since, caught between developers, foreclosures, and Native Hawaiian descendants who say the land was never anyone's to sell.

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Coco Palms Resort: Deborah's Inn

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The Wailua River mouth has been sacred ground for centuries. Hawaiian tradition marks it as the landing place of the Kahiki voyagers around 500 AD, a site of royal compounds and birthing stones. When Kauai's monarch Kaumualii was kidnapped by the powerful regent Kaahumanu in the ...

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Coco Palms Resort: Torches and Technicolor

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1896, a German immigrant named William Lindemann planted over 2,000 coconut trees on the site, dreaming of a copra empire. He did not realize how slowly coconut palms mature, and the plantation failed spectacularly. But the grove survived him. By 1952, Lyle Guslander leased th...

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Coco Palms Resort: The Storm and the Silence

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Hurricane Iniki struck Kauai on September 11, 1992, with sustained winds of 145 miles per hour. The Coco Palms Resort was destroyed, and it has never reopened. For years, the grounds remained accessible through Hawaii Movie Tours, where former caretaker Bob Jasper would greet vis...

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Coco Palms Resort: Whose Land Is It?

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The legal battles over this land stretch back to 1855, when the will of Kealiiahonui, son of Kaumualii, was filed in probate. In 1866, a petition involving Queen Kapiolani and King Kalakaua sought to revoke that will. The case was dismissed, then relitigated, then dismissed again...

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Coco Palms Resort: The Coconut Coast

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The old coconut grove, planted by Lindemann more than a century ago, still defines this stretch of Kauai's eastern coastline, even as many of the original trees have outlived their natural lifespan and thinned with time. The state land board ordered developers to stop unpermitted...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0