West Coast gold rush

Before the rush, the West Coast was home to Poutini Ngāi Tahu, and the beds of the Arahura and Taramakau rivers were valued as sources of pounamu (greenstone). In 1859 the government instructed James Mackay to buy the land, and on 21 May 1860 leading Poutini Ngāi Tahu chiefs signed the Arahura Deed, selling the whole West Coast to the Crown for £300, apart from small reserves such as Māwhera, now part of Greymouth. Surveyor John Rochfort found gold in several places in November 1859. Te Ara also credits Māori prospectors with revealing the coast's promise: they showed their gold to a Collingwood shopkeeper and led him to the Arahura River. After the Otago discoveries of 1861, the Canterbury provincial government offered a £1,000 reward for finding gold in Canterbury, whose territory then included the coast south of the Grey River. Even so, there were no major finds for several years, and at the end of 1863 the region's total population was probably less than 300.

Payable gold was found at Greenstone Creek, a tributary of the Taramakau, in mid-1864; the 1966 Encyclopaedia credits Albert Hunt and others and dates the find to July. Floods and poor returns on the Wakamarina field in Marlborough had left prospectors ready to move. The 1966 Encyclopaedia counts 1,500 miners on the coast by the end of 1864, 7,000 by April 1865 and more than 16,000 by September. When the geologist Julius Haast visited Hokitika in April 1865 he described its half-mile main street, lined with hotels, banks and houses, as 'a scene of almost indescribable bustle and activity'. By Christmas 1865 all of Hokitika's 72 hotels were packed with miners. With a run of new finds through 1865 and 1866, the population peaked at about 28,700 in late 1867. Te Ara notes this was about 12% of New Zealand's European population, and one in five of its European men.

Many diggers came by sea, directly from the Victorian goldfields or by coastal ship from Christchurch, Dunedin and Nelson, and more than a third were Irish. Hokitika, the closest anchorage to the diggings, became the main port even though the bar at the river mouth was always difficult for ships: between 1865 and 1867 there were 108 strandings and 32 total losses there. A coach road over Arthur's Pass opened in 1866. The miners objected to the Canterbury provincial government's reluctance to spend goldfields revenue on local roads and harbours, and the central government made Westland a separate county, which became a province in 1873. The Westland Representation Act 1867 gave the vote to holders of a miner's right. Among the arrivals was Richard Seddon, who came to Hokitika in 1866, represented parts of Westland in Parliament from 1879 and became premier in 1893.

The rush to Addison's Flat in May 1867 was the last real 'rush' on the coast, as the alluvial deposits were worked out and the new Thames goldfield drew miners north. The richest sites were soon exhausted, and the population fell by a few thousand after 1867 before growing again after 1882. Mining continued in large sluicing claims, around 2,000 Chinese miners arrived in the 1870s to rework old tailings, and quartz mining began near Reefton around 1870. Hokitika's port was eventually abandoned because of its shipwrecks. Greymouth, with a better harbour, took much of its trade, and British coal miners brought a strong union tradition to the Buller and Grey coalfields. The West Coast gained a reputation as a stronghold of the labour movement, though Te Ara notes this is sometimes overstated.