Mangamahu
Mangamahu is a hill-country farming and forestry community in the middle reaches of the Whangaehu River valley, in the Rangitikei District of Manawatu-Wanganui, New Zealand. It is centred on the village of Mangamahu, which is situated on river flats where the Mangamahu stream flows into the Whangaehu river. Mangamahu has a primary school (5 - 10 children) which has been open since 1894 and a War Memorial hall built in 1952.
The old hotel that was built in 1891 and closed in 1974 while the general store built in 1885 were closed in the late sixties. This was due to a decline in the wool and meat trades in the 1970s and improved roads meaning greater ease of travel. Some of the farms in the district have now being converted to pine plantations.
The Mangamahu river flats were formed by huge mud slides or "lahars" (c. 1200 and 1520 AD) flowing down the Whangaehu river from the crater lake of Mount Ruapehu.
The river flat on which Mangamahu School is situated is the site of an old Ngati Apa Maori camp-site named Kohanga. This was occupied in summer by bird-snaring and eel-trapping groups from further down the Whangaehu, and also used as a way station by those travelling the trail up the ridge between the Whangaehu river and Mangamahu stream, from the fortified pa at Manumanu (near the mouth of the Mangawhero river) to Karioi, and then across the Rangipo Desert and Lake Taupo to the Waikato and Rotorua.
Kohanga and Manumanu were destroyed during the musket wars in 1840 and 1843, and most of the surviving inhabitants of the upper valley moved west to Parikino on the Whanganui River.
British colonists began buying the land in the 1870s. James MacDonald was the first white settler, introducing sheep to his clearing in the bush at 'Glenaladale' in 1872. His wife joined him there in 1875.
During the 1880s the old Maori trail through Mangamahu was developed into a bench track for pack horses (Hales Track). It followed the Whangaehu river flats to the Mangamahu Stream, then went up the northern ridgeline of the Mangamahu Stream to Bald Hill, and on to Karioi. It gave settlers access to the nearer forest-covered hills of the area, (now Ruakiwi, Inzevar, Aranui and Mt View farms) and enabled packhorses to bring wool from sheep grazing on the high back-country tussock lands at Ngamatea and Waiouru. From Waiouru the trail went on to Moawhango and then to Napier.
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