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.Pre-European historyThe Mangamahu river flats were formed by huge mud slides or "lahars" 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 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.