Home to approximately 250 native Hawaiians, Ni'ihau is the smallest of the populated Hawaiian Islands. It is also privately owned: Offered for sale by King Kamehameha IV in 1863, the island was purchased by Elizabeth Sinclair for $10,000. (Sinclair reportedly chose to buy the island over other choice pieces of real estate such as Waikiki, Pearl Harbor and the island of Lanai.) Mrs. Sinclair and her adult offspring turned the entire island into a cattle and sheep ranch before moving back to Kauai.

Forbidden
Today the Kauai descendents of Helen Sinclair Robinson hold title to the land, with the U.S. Navy also maintaining a presence there for weapons testing. Until recently the island was off-limits to outsiders but is now open to helicopter tours on an extremely limited basis. The three-hour tours, offered by the Robinson-owned Ni'ihau Helicopters, subsidize the cost of maintaining helicopter service to the island in times of medical emergency. (One of the few outsiders to visit the island prior to these tours did so in 1941, when a lone Japanese pilot involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor crashed on the island.)

Preserving Culture
As such, the island has remained virtually immune to the influences of the outside world: The Hawaiian language is spoken almost exclusively here, and residents have no electricity, cars, roads, hotels or restaurants. Each family tends its own garden to supplement the beef and mutton that are still raised on the ranch. Meanwhile, the pristine beaches of Ni'ihau yield one of the most prized possessions in the Islands — the extremely rare Ni'ihau shell islanders fashion into lei worth hundreds (and even thousands) of dollars.

What's More...
• Located 17 miles off the west coast of Kauai, Ni'ihau is the smallest of the inhabited Hawaiian Islands, with a land area of 70 square miles.

• Ni'ihau's official flower is the pupu shell

• The island's official color is white