The Tuia Mātauranga Pōkai Whenua GeoTour follows the footsteps of early explorers of Aotearoa New Zealand taking you to places where leaders of the past searched for food, resources and ways to adapt and survive in this new land. Use the Pōkai Whenua GeoTour as your classroom to you explore the stories of the past, in the present, to preserve what is unique in Aotearoa New Zealand for the future. Collect the codewords to get the Geocoin puzzle pieces To be able to complete this GeoTour and receive your special Geocoin collectable, remember to take a note of the codeword placed in the cache. This will need to be recorded in your passport which can be downloaded here.
During the 1840s a number of settlers made agreements with Māori owners for the settlement of the land within the Rangitikei District. Many travelled up the coast from Wellington and crossed the Rangitikei River in a ferry operated by Thomas Scott.
Without roads, the first settlers were restricted to the windswept coastlands and along the two boundary rivers. The settlement was along the two rivers, from the Turakina River to Bonny Glen and stretched along the Rangitikei River from Parewanui to Porewa and Rata and only later from Porewa to Tutaenui,. By 1858 the district was well settled.
In 1868 the coaching days commenced. Rangitikei's town of Marton became linked by road with Wellington and Wanganui. The first railway was opened in the district in 1878 from Marton to Turakina followed by Halcombe to Marton and Foxton to Wanganui the same year.
In 1883/4 John Rochfort, a government surveyor created the route for the railway line from Marton through the upper Rangitikei and Hautapu districts to Te Awamutu. Rail played a large part in the early development of the Taihape township. The railway station was completed in 1904. By 1909 there were 23 railway houses.
Adam Glasgow was the first white man to live in the Rangitikei, living with a Māori tribe in Turakina. In 1841 the Glasgow family welcomed Scotsman Alexander Grant. An early settler in Turakina, he was a surveyor from Wellington and New Plymouth before settling in the Rangitikei.
For three years the small village was known as Tutaenui, named after the stream running through its centre. In 1869 local citizens changed the name to Marton to honour the birthplace of Captain James Cook in Middlesbrough, marking his landing in New Zealand exactly 100 years earlier. It is not known if this change of name was influenced by the mistranslation of 'tutae' (meaning 'dung') and 'nui' (meaning 'large'). (Actual translation: 'tu' -stand, 'tae' -arrive, 'nui' big; i.e., a 'big gathering').
From the start Marton was an ideal supply centre for district farmers, who first began arriving in the early 1850s. From butter and wool they moved on to growing wheat in 1863, and big crops led to three flourmills being launched in the area in 1864.
After the town itself opened up in 1866, general stores, two hotels and several blacksmiths soon started. Marton became a home base for the horse industry, with saddlers, wheelwrights, livery stables and coachbuilders competing for business, while Clydesdale and Suffolk Punch sires toured the district to build up the population of plough horses needed as new farms sprang into being.
Timber from Rangitikei forests served the town's two timbermills, the first from 1889 onwards.
Industry developed quietly at first in Marton, starting with flourmilling, brickmaking and wool presses. By the late 1950s there was an incredible array of industries and factories in action. They turned out products as diverse as men's shirts, tractor safety cabs, soft drinks, vegetable salads, readymix concrete, field tiles, dog biscuits, knitwear, dried peas, electronic petrol pumps, vegetable digging machinery.