Over 23,000 images are carved into the pāhoehoe (smooth lava) at Puʻu Loa, a sacred site in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. Most are small round holes, with figures and other shapes pecked into the rock. You reach them on a short, level walk from Chain of Craters Road, about 1.4 miles round trip, ending at a boardwalk that loops the carvings.
There’s no shade on the lava and it heats up fast, so go early or late in the day. Hawaiian families placed a child’s piko (umbilical cord stub) in these holes to ask for a long life, so stay on the boardwalk and leave the carvings alone.
Trailhead of the Puʻu Loa petroglyph trail. To get here, drive down Chain of Craters Road in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park
The name Puʻu Loa means ‘Long Hill,’ and Hawaiians also read it as ‘Hill of long life.’ For generations, a family would set a newborn’s piko into a hole in the lava and cover it with a stone, then return to find the cord gone by morning, a sign the child would live long. The site is sacred to Hawaiians, and to the people of Kalapana in particular.
The raised boardwalk over the Puʻu Loa petroglyphs. Once you reach the field, you view the carvings from this walkway so foot traffic never touches them
The short video below about the Puʻu Loa petroglyphs was written and produced by Donnie MacGowan and narrated by Frank Burgess.
Directions to the Puʻu Loa Petroglyphs
The Puʻu Loa trailhead is a marked pullout on Chain of Craters Road, at Milepost 16.5, with parking on both sides of the road and an emergency call box. From Volcano Village, enter Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and take the first left past the entrance station onto Crater Rim Drive. Follow it to the intersection with Chain of Craters Road, turn left, and drive down toward the coast. The trail entrance is on the east side of the road, next to the call box.
Wear sunscreen and a hat and bring plenty of water: the trail crosses open lava with no shade.
What are Petroglyphs?
Petroglyphs are images pecked into rock. The word comes from the Greek petros, meaning rock, and glyphein, to carve. Hawaiians call this rock art kiʻi pōhaku, images in stone. The lava at Puʻu Loa formed between about AD 1200 and 1450, and Hawaiians kept adding carvings to the field into the early 1900s.
Ancient petroglyphs at Puʻu Loa. These rock carvings were left in the lava by early Hawaiians
Some of the images cluster near old land boundaries or along foot trails across the lava, but no one knows the full reasons for their placement or their meaning. Building resorts and golf courses has destroyed many petroglyphs elsewhere on the island, including ancient images that survived earthquakes and lava flows.
Mālama ʻĀina: Take care of the land
Some fields, though, have been preserved and are open to the public. Do not touch the carvings or try to make rubbings of them: actions like these destroy work that has lasted for centuries. For the best photos, come early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when the low, slanting light casts shadows across the carvings and makes them easier to see.
See our map of Volcano for the location of the Puʻu Loa Petroglyph field.
More petroglyph sites on the Big Island
If you’re staying on the west side of the Big Island rather than heading to Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, you can still see petroglyphs at the Waikoloa petroglyphs and the Puakō petroglyph preserve. Both are near Waikoloa village, about a 30-minute drive from Kailua-Kona.
Pānau, the stretch of Puna coast this field sits on, is where the moʻolelo (story) of the child born a shark begins. We retell it, and six others, on our Big Island mythology page.