One of Hawaii's most famous coastal landmarks is gone. The National Park Service confirmed on October 1 that Hōlei Sea Arch in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park has collapsed into the Pacific Ocean — the roughly 90-foot (27-meter) natural stone arch stood for more than 550 years and vanished overnight.
Nobody witnessed the exact moment. On Wednesday, September 23, the park temporarily closed ahead of Tropical Storm Nolo, and the arch was still standing. When the park reopened on Monday, September 28, it was gone. The park service announced it on social media with before-and-after photos: "Yes, it's true. RIP Hōlei Sea Arch." The post drew over 2,600 reactions in seven hours, and the comments turned into a visitors' photo album — some sharing final shots from September 22, others digging out family photos from decades back.
The arch formed about 550 years ago, when lava flows from an eruption reached the cliff edge and Pacific waves hollowed them out. It stood on the southern coast of the Big Island at the end of Chain of Craters Road, named for the Hōlei Pali escarpment on the volcano's slopes. The rock is basalt in layers of differing hardness, and the ocean picks on the soft ones — "differential erosion" is both how the arch was made 550 years ago and how it was destroyed this time.
The collapse was no surprise. Earthquakes during the 2018 Kīlauea eruption damaged the nearby cliffs; in January 2020, new cracks prompted the park to close the original overlook, opening a replacement viewing area farther back that March; later that year, massive surf from Tropical Storm Darby broke a chunk off the arch's leg; and in July 2022, a historic south swell tore away another large piece. Rangers warned afterward that the remaining arch could collapse at any time without warning.
The Park Service had written the epitaph on its website long ago: "This formation is beautiful, but temporary, and has a limited life span. The sea arch will eventually crumble into the sea. However, others will replace it as the cliff slowly migrates inland." After the collapse, officials urged visitors to stay back from the unstable cliff edges, which drop vertically into the ocean and present a serious falling hazard. Photos on social media already show people entering the closed area near where the arch stood, putting themselves and rescuers at risk.
For visitors, the view at the end of Chain of Craters Road has changed — but the story isn't over. Along the same coastline, the Pacific keeps carving. To nature, 550 years is a blink; to those who pressed the shutter before the end of September, their photos are now one of a kind.