Place:Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand

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Hamilton (Kirikiriroa in Māori) is the centre of New Zealand's fourth largest urban area, and Hamilton City is the country's fourth largest territorial authority. Hamilton is in the Waikato Region of the North Island, approximately south of Auckland. It sits at a major road and rail nexus in the centre of the Waikato basin, on both banks of the Waikato River.

Initially an agricultural service centre, it now has a growing and diverse economy and is the second fastest growing urban area in New Zealand. Education and research and development play an important part in Hamilton's economy, as the city is home to approximately 40,000 tertiary students and 1,000 PhD scientists.

History

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The area now covered by the city was originally the site of a handful of Māori villages (kāinga), including Pukete, Miropiko and Kirikiriroa ("long stretch of gravel'), from which the city takes its Māori name. Local Māori were the target of raids by Ngāpuhi during the Musket Wars, and several pā sites from this period can still be found beside the Waikato River.In December 2011 several rua or food storage pits were found near the Waikato River bank, close to the Waikato museum. Missionaries such as Gorst, estimated that Kirikiriroa had a population of about 78 before the Waikato Kingitanga wars of 1863-64. The government estimated the Waikato area had a Maori population of 3,400 at the same time. By the time British settlers arrived after 1863, most of these villages had been abandoned as the inhabitants were away fighting with the Kingitanga rebels further west in the battlefields of the upper Waipa river. Missionaries arrived in the area in the 1830s. At the end of the Waikato Campaign in the New Zealand Wars the four regiments of the Waikato Militia were settled as a peace-keeping force across the region.^[1] The 1st Regiment was at Tauranga, the 2nd at Pirongia, the 3rd at Cambridge and the 4th at Kirikiriroa.^[1] The settlement was founded on 24 August 1864 and named by Colonel William Moule after Captain John Fane Charles Hamilton, the popular Scottish commander of HMS Esk, who was killed in the battle of Gate Pā, Tauranga.

The road from Auckland reached Hamilton in 1867 and the railway in December 1877. That same month, the towns of Hamilton West and Hamilton East merged under a single borough council. The first traffic bridge between Hamilton West and Hamilton East, known as the Union Bridge, opened in 1879. It was replaced by the Victoria Bridge in 1910.

The first railway bridge, the Claudelands Bridge, was opened in 1884. It was converted to a road traffic bridge in 1965. Hamilton reached 1,000 people in 1900, and the town of Frankton merged with the Hamilton Borough in 1917.^[2] Between 1912 and 1936, Hamilton expanded with new land in Claudelands (1912), Maeroa (1925), and Richmond – modern day Waikato Hospital and northern Melville (1936). Hamilton was proclaimed a city in 1945.^[1]

The city is near the southernmost navigable reach (by the settlers steam boats) of the Waikato River, amidst New Zealand's richest and now fertile agricultural land that was once largely Raupo and Kahikatea swamp

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