Hawaii Volcanoes National Park nears end of $36 million recovery project

The most visible sign of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park’s long recovery is now open above Halemaumau crater: a rebuilt Uēkahuna overlook where visitors can once again stand at Kīlauea’s highest point and look across the caldera. The $36 million disaster recovery project is nearing its finish line, turning damage left by the 2018 eruption into new public space, restored stonework and upgraded facilities.

The eruption reshaped the summit in ways that could not simply be patched over. National Park Service records say tens of thousands of earthquakes, towering ash plumes and a massive collapse changed Kīlauea dramatically, while lava flows destroyed more than 700 homes in the Puna District. The U.S. Geological Survey called it Kīlauea’s largest lower East Rift Zone eruption and summit collapse in at least 200 years, and its most impactful eruption in centuries.

At the summit, some damage was too severe to repair, including part of the road that once circled the area and collapsed into the volcanic crater. But other pieces of the park are being rebuilt with a different goal in mind. Rather than replace the former Jaggar Museum, park planners chose an expanded viewing platform at Uēkahuna, designed to give visitors a wider, more open place to watch Kīlauea and the landscape around it.

The National Park Service reopened the Uēkahuna summit viewing area on May 28, 2025, after the site had been closed since May 2018. The new overlook keeps the historic feel of the summit through restored stone walls and a footprint outline made from stones taken from the original Jaggar Museum columns, a deliberate reminder of the building that once anchored the bluff. The former museum was the park’s first museum and welcomed millions of visitors over many decades.

The site carries more than scenic value. Uēkahuna is a wahi pana, a place of deep Hawaiian tradition and a location tied to Native Hawaiian ritual and cultural practices honoring Pelehonuamea. That history is part of why the park’s recovery has been treated as more than a construction job: it has been a test of how to restore access while respecting a place that matters to culture, science and daily life on the Big Island.

Another sign of the work under way is a new 5,000-square-foot halau near the Kīlauea Visitor Center, showing that the recovery is also investing in cultural and educational space. National Park Service planning says the project is meant to repair or replace critical park infrastructure and U.S. Geological Survey-operated facilities damaged in 2018 and to address the future use of the Uēkahuna Bluff area.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park spans from sea level to 13,680 feet and is both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve. As the last major pieces of the recovery come together, the park is restoring one of the island’s most important public overlooks and one of its most visible windows into an active volcano.