Long before any of this, the mouth of the Wailua River was the spiritual heart of Kauaʻi. Legends say Tahitian voyagers first landed here in the 12th century, finding fresh water flowing from Mount Waiʻaleʻale, fertile valleys for taro, and an east-facing shore where the rising sun could be greeted in prayer.

For centuries afterward, this was the home of Kauaʻi's ruling aliʻi (chiefs). Beneath the sand along the riverbank rest 61 boulders, eight of them marked with kiʻi pōhaku (stone images), the Hawaiian word for petroglyphs. Some are believed to date to the earliest Tahitian settlers. Carved using stone tools of varying sharpness, the figures include human forms, sails, fish, and shapes that defy easy interpretation. Hawaiian petroglyphs are not realistic illustrations of nature but symbolic images of beings and forces, and a single carving may hold more than one meaning. Some honored ʻaumākua (ancestral guardian spirits). Some marked the beginning or end of an ahupuaʻa (traditional land division), where travelers passing through might be called to carve a figure as an offering, an appeal for safe passage, or a warning of danger ahead. Of the more than 150 known petroglyph sites in Hawaiʻi, only a handful are recorded on Kauaʻi, which makes the boulders at Wailua all the more rare.

The ocean and river currents cover and uncover them throughout the year. When they appear, it is brief and unpredictable. Further upriver lie the Pōhaku Hoʻohānau (royal birthstones), where Kauaʻi's kings were born, including the island's last reigning monarch, King Kaumualiʻi, around 1780.

Closer to the modern era, the Wailua River became home to Queen Deborah Kapule, favorite wife of King Kaumualiʻi, who in the 1830s and 1840s raised fish in the lagoons just inland and welcomed travelers to her hale (home) with such generosity that her residence became known as Deborah's Inn.

In the 20th century the land changed hands again, becoming part of the storied Coco Palms Resort era across the highway, where Elvis filmed Blue Hawaii in 1962. The hotel grounds at your back are far newer than any of this. They sit on land whose every layer carries the breath of those who came before.