Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Naalehu, HI

Naalehu, whose Census spelling is Nāʻālehu, is a community and census-designated place (CDP) in Hawaii County on the island of Hawaii, in the Kaʻū District near the southern tip of the island.

Naalehu is Hawaiian for the volcanic ashes, and the community calls itself the southernmost town in the United States.

The 2020 census recorded 811 residents in 248 households in the Naalehu CDP, down from 866 in 2010 and 919 in 2000, while the community had 1,038 residents in 1940 and peaked at 1,168 in 1980.

Naalehu began as one of several plantation camps of the Hutchinson Sugar Plantation Company and was later developed as a proper town by plantation manager J. Beaty, who consolidated the camps of Naalehu, Honuapo, Hilea and Kaalaiki into the town by 1928.

At one time Naalehu had an eight-roller mill and Honuapo a nine-roller mill, and after the Naalehu mill wore out around 1911 a new central mill was built at Honuapo, whose landing had a reputation for loading and shipping sugar cheaper than any other port in the islands.

The CDP covers 2.17 square miles, all of it land, at an elevation of 738 feet, and it is bordered to the west by Waiohinu and to the southwest by Discovery Harbour.

Naalehu is served by ZIP code 96772, and it is one of the southernmost communities with a post office in the 50 states.

Naalehu Elementary School is in the community, and Naalehu Public Library, which opened on February 24, 1994, reopened after an expansion on November 15, 2021.

Naalehu is home to one of several ground communication stations operated by Bigelow Aerospace that communicate with its space modules in orbit, and to Lighthouse Baptist Church, the southernmost church in the United States.

The highest temperature recorded in Naalehu is 96 degrees Fahrenheit and the lowest is 50 degrees, in climate records extending back to 1905.