76 YEARS OLD

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21199, 23 August 1940, Page 4

76 YEARS OLD

BIRTH OF HAMILTON FOURTH WAIKATOS’ LANDING DEVELOPMENT OF TOWN On August 24 seventy-six years ago the gun-boat Rangiriri made its way up the Waikato River in search of a suitable place for the militia to land and found a settlement. Coming upon gently-sloping banks, the boat hove to and the travellers disembarked. The leader of the contingent was Captain William Steele and the men he commanded were known as the Fourth Waikato Regiment. The spot at which they disembarked is now the Hamilton Soldiers’ Memorial Park, and their landing laid the foundations of what in a little over three-quarters of a century was to become the Dominion’s foremost inland town. That those foundations were sturdy and that the faith placed in the district in those far-off days was justi • fled has been proved time and again by the rapid progress and expansion which have carried the settlement to city status within such a short compass of time. When the men of the 4th Waikato Militia took up their grants of land to make their homes at Hamilton it was the intention that the eastern side of the Waikato River should carry the township. Stores were built, dwellings rose and the settlement took the name of Kirikiriroa. However, it was found in the early ’seventies that a business centre had been well established on the western bank, fronting the river near the first landing and running up Grantham Street toward the present post office block. The name Kirikiriroa had long since fallen into disuse and early settlers knew their embryo township as Hamilton, so named after Captain J. F. C. Hamilton, who was killed at the Gate Pa engagement not long before the arrival of the 4th Waikatos at Hamilton. Two separate and distinct settlements remained until December 27, 1877, when the New Zealand Gazette contained a notice constituting the Borough of Hamilton. With the consequent election of a mayor and a council the interests of both sides of the river were bound together and the town began to make its first show of real progress. Since then it has developed into a business and industrial hub worthy of the great district which surrounds it, and stands as a monument to the wisdom and foresight of the 4th Waikatos who chose the site to establish their settlement.