Puʻukoholā rises above Kawaihae Bay within a Native Hawaiian landscape of settlements, fields, fishponds, canoe routes, shrines, and chiefly centers. By the late eighteenth century, Kamehameha controlled much of Hawaiʻi Island but faced powerful rivals. According to Hawaiian traditions, the kahuna Kapoukahi advised him to build a great heiau dedicated to his war god Kūkāʻilimoku. The name Puʻukoholā means Hill of the Whale. Construction in 1790–1791 joined political strategy, religious obligation, community labor, and a commanding view over an important harbor.

Workers assembled the massive platform from dry-laid lava stone without mortar. Oral traditions recount a human chain carrying stones from Pololū Valley over many miles, though the precise logistics remain a subject of interpretation. Specialized builders followed ritual and architectural knowledge, erecting wooden houses, oracle towers, images, fences, and offering places on the stone foundation. At the dedication, Kamehameha's rival and cousin Keōua Kūʻahuʻula came to Kawaihae and was killed with companions. The event removed a major opponent and strengthened Kamehameha's movement toward unifying the Hawaiian Islands by 1810.

Nearby Mailekini Heiau predates Puʻukoholā and was later adapted as a fort overlooking the bay, reflecting the arrival of cannon and foreign ships. In 1793 British navigator George Vancouver met Kamehameha at Kawaihae and presented livestock, while diplomacy and maritime trade reshaped the kingdom. After Hawaiian leaders ended the kapu system in 1819, many heiau ceased their former ritual functions and perishable superstructures disappeared. Stone foundations endured, however, and Native Hawaiian families retained genealogical, spiritual, and historical relationships to the place through the upheavals of conversion, disease, land division, and colonial pressure.

Congress established Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historic Site in 1972. The great stone platform survives substantially as an original eighteenth-century structure, strengthened through careful stabilization rather than rebuilt into a conjectural complete temple. Wooden towers, thatched houses, fences, and kiʻi that once stood above it are absent or represented only through interpretation and selective modern construction elsewhere. Mailekini, the John Young homestead area, Pelekane Bay, trails, and archaeological deposits add older and later layers. Visitor buildings and pathways are modern and deliberately separated from sacred fabric.

The National Park Service manages the site in collaboration with Native Hawaiian practitioners, descendants, and community organizations. General access has often been free, but hours, ceremonies, weather, and conservation needs can restrict particular areas. Visitors view Puʻukoholā from designated routes and may not climb onto the heiau. The place is not simply a monument to conquest or a picturesque stone ruin. It remains culturally alive, linking sacred architecture, chiefly authority, warfare, state formation, ocean exchange, oral tradition, and present-day practice. Clear interpretation distinguishes original stonework, vanished perishable structures, stabilized areas, and modern visitor facilities.