Fifty states of Street View

In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th state admitted to the union. Today, 50 years later, we're including Hawaii as the 50th state in Street View on Google Maps. With our imagery of Oahu and Maui, you can now take a virtual vacation to white sandy beaches, revisit special places from your honeymoon, or plan your next getaway. We've worked with the Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau to create collections in our new Street View Gallery featuring Hawaii's best beaches and hometown favorites of President Obama.

Being born and raised on Oahu, I like to think we saved the best for last. I'll get you started with a tour around some of my favorite places from home.

Waimea Bay is famous for 30-foot winter waves. In the summer, as you can see in Street View, it transforms into a calm bay for snorkeling and swimming:

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If you're a history buff, you can also visit Iolani Palace, a national historic landmark that was the official residence of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s last two monarchs:

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This is just a small taste of all the beautiful sights in the Aloha State. Check out the gallery to see even more stunning high-resolution imagery. And now that we have imagery from all 50 states in the U.S., we've created tours of the 50 state capitol buildings for the gallery.

One of the great things about Street View is that it lets you virtually wander the streets of a diverse range of cities around the world, whether you want to gaze up at the Tokyo Tower in Japan or explore ancient Roman ruins in Italy. In addition to expanding our coverage in the U.S., today we're also adding imagery from Mexico for the first time, covering Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel:

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As we keep working to bring Street View to new countries and cities across the globe, we want to hear directly from you about the places that you want to see featured in Street View next. A few weeks ago, we asked you to submit your nominations for places that you want our Street View trike to visit. We combed through more than 25,000 submissions and today we're unveiling the finalists. You can read more about the competition and the finalists on the Lat Long blog, and head to www.google.com/trike to cast your votes for the special locations we should add to Google Maps next.

Posted by Laura Melahn, Product Marketing Manager