Taupiri

Taupiri is a small township of about 450 people on the eastern bank of the Waikato River in the Waikato District of New Zealand. It is overlooked by Taupiri mountain, the sacred burial ground for the Waikato tribes of the Māori people, located just to the north.

Taupiri is located near the northern end of the Waikato Basin immediately south of the junction of the Mangawara Stream (which drains the northern part of the basin) and the Waikato River. The Waikato River then flows northward through the Taupiri Gorge between the Hākarimata Range to the south and the Taupiri Range to the north, into the Lower Waikato.

State Highway 1 (SH1) and the North Island Main Trunk railway line run through the town and the gorge, linking Huntly 8 kilometres to the north and Ngāruawāhia 7 kilometres to the south. The intersection of SH1 and State Highway 1b (SH1B) is at the northern end of Taupiri. When the Ngāruawāhia Bypass section of the Waikato Expressway is completed the first 2 kilometres of SH1b will become SH1 which will mean that SH1 will bypass Taupiri.

Until sometime in the 19th century, a large Māori village or town, Kaitotehe, stood on the flat land on the other side of the river, below the Hākarimata Range. In early years it was the headquarters of Ngāti Mahuta. Te Putu built Taupiri pā on the summit of a spur of Taupiri mountain, in the 17th century. When Te Putu was killed, he was buried at the pā, which thus became tapu (sacred) and was abandoned. Early European travellers in the area were obliged by Māori to cross to the other side of the Waikato River to avoid the sacred area. In the early 19th century, Kaitotehe was the home of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, the paramount chief of Ngāti Mahuta who became the first Māori King.

Taupiri township was settled by Pākehā in the 1870s, and became a farming centre, with flax mills and a sawmill. A dairy factory was built in 1921, then a larger one in 1930. In the 2006 census, 32 per cent of the population were Māori.