Checking in at the Most Expensive Hawaiian Resort of the 1960s: Photos
Laurance S. Rockefeller’s Mauna Kea Beach Hotel turns 50, keeping true luxury alive
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Waves of heat rise from the blacktop. On either side, fields of rock, ebony and ashen are interrupted only by wan scrub or long-charred tree stumps, oxidized by the salt air to an eerie copper. The oft-snowcapped peak of Mauna Kea looks incongruous in the distance, the now-icy volcano from which all this scorched earth came.
This is the arid Kohala Coast on the western side of Hawaii’s Big Island, and it’s startling in its beauty. Barren, moonlike expanses meet brilliant blue sky above and turquoise waters at its fringes. It’s hardly a landscape that screams “luxury resort.”