"Waipio Valley Hawaii" reads the hand-lettered caption on this breathtaking real-photo postcard — and breathtaking is exactly the word, for twin waterfalls plunge hundreds of feet down sheer green cliffs into the sacred valley that Hawaiians call the "Valley of the Kings," while below in the lush flat bottom a small village cluster of wooden buildings and a white church sits amid taro fields, tiny against the cathedral scale of the pali walls rising behind. Waipio Valley on the Hamakua Coast of the Big Island was one of the most photographed and storied landscapes of pre-statehood Hawaii, the legendary home of ancient Hawaiian royalty and the setting for numerous myths. This card, likely produced between 1907 and 1918 based on the embossed back format, captures the valley in its inhabited era — before the 1946 tsunami drove most residents out permanently — making it a document of a community that no longer exists in its former form. The dual waterfalls, identified as Hi'ilawe (the taller) and a seasonal companion fall, are among the highest in the United States.