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Burkes Pass is a mountain pass and at its base, a small town on State Highway 8 at the entrance to the 
A dray track was cut through Burkes Pass in 1857-58. Settlers and bullock teams soon found The Long Cutting was the easier of the two passageways to negotiate, becoming the main thoroughfare for travellers in to the Mackenzie, a vast land known by Maori for its plentiful supply of wekas on the plains and eels in the streams and lakes. With travel slow and arduous, the need for a resting place for weary travellers soon became evident.
A site, on the west side of the top of The Long Cutting, was set aside in 1859 to establish a central depot for coal, wood, and food supplies. It was a bleak, exposed site, between Sterickers Mound, near Sawdon Creek, and the foot of the spur from Mount Burgess. James Noonan ignored the official township site building the first hotel in 1861 at Cabbage Tree Creek in the valley behind where the remains of the hotel built in 1869 are today.
A town, first known as Cabbage Tree Creek, then Clulee, and finally Burkes Pass, sprang up around the hotel. For more than half a century a colourful cavalcade passed through the town, Burkes Pass becoming the social, business, and sporting centre for the Mackenzie Country pioneers. Its heyday was 1890 to 1910 when there was a population of 143 and a three-teacher school.
However, the promised railway, which was to cement Burkes Pass’s future as the capital of the Mackenzie, never arrived. It stopped at Fairlie in 1884, displacing Burkes Pass as the business centre. The final blow was in 1891, when the Mount Cook Road Board, in a 4–3 vote, decided to relocate to Fairlie.
The Burkes Pass Scenic Reserve, administered by the
The Burkes Pass Heritage Trust
{{Mackenzie District Mackenzie District Mountain passes of New Zealand Transport in Canterbury, New Zealand Landforms of Canterbury, New Zealand
Mackenzie Country
The Mackenzie Basin (), popularly and traditionally known as the Mackenzie Country, is an elliptical intermontane river basin, basin located in the Mackenzie District, Mackenzie and Waitaki Districts, near the centre of the South Island of Ne ...
in South Canterbury, New Zealand. It is named after Michael John Burke (1812 Co. Galway-1869 Melbourne) a graduate of Dublin University
The University of Dublin ( ga, Ollscoil Átha Cliath), corporately designated the Chancellor, Doctors and Masters of the University of Dublin, is a university located in Dublin, Ireland. It is the degree-awarding body for Trinity College Dubl ...
, who drove a team of bullocks through the passageway which leads up into the Mackenzie Country in 1855. This was an alternative route to the Mackenzie Pass, which the notorious alleged sheep stealer, James Mckenzie, had used to take his sheep into the Otago goldfields. Burkes Pass separates the Two Thumb Range
The Two Thumb Range (sometimes called the Two Thumbs Range) is a range of mountains in the Canterbury Region of New Zealand's South Island. It is located to the east of Lake Tekapo and has several peaks which rise to around .
to the north from the Rollesby and Albury ranges to the south, and sits at an altitude of . A memorial to Burke stands close to the pass's saddle.
Burke may not have been the first European to cross the Pass called after him. G Dunnage camped in the vicinity in 1855 before the geographical features were named.
(Info Source: Timaru Museum Database)
A dray track was cut through Burkes Pass in 1857-58. Settlers and bullock teams soon found The Long Cutting was the easier of the two passageways to negotiate, becoming the main thoroughfare for travellers in to the Mackenzie, a vast land known by Maori for its plentiful supply of wekas on the plains and eels in the streams and lakes. With travel slow and arduous, the need for a resting place for weary travellers soon became evident.
A site, on the west side of the top of The Long Cutting, was set aside in 1859 to establish a central depot for coal, wood, and food supplies. It was a bleak, exposed site, between Sterickers Mound, near Sawdon Creek, and the foot of the spur from Mount Burgess. James Noonan
However, the promised railway, which was to cement Burkes Pass’s future as the capital of the Mackenzie, never arrived. It stopped at Fairlie in 1884, displacing Burkes Pass as the business centre. The final blow was in 1891, when the Mount Cook Road Board, in a 4–3 vote, decided to relocate to Fairlie.
The Burkes Pass Scenic Reserve, administered by the Department of Conservation
An environmental ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for the environment and/or natural resources. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of the Environment ...
, is a former stock droving reserve one kilometre to the west of the pass. The ecological values are threatened by introduced rabbits, lupin, broom and wilding conifers
Wilding conifers, also known as wilding pines, are invasive trees in the high country of New Zealand. Millions of dollars are spent on controlling their spread.
In the South Island they threaten 210,000 hectares of public land administered by t ...
. Burkes Pass is home to the critically endangered Canterbury knobbled weevil which lives on speargrass. It has only been found in a site at Burkes Pass.
Notable people
References
External links
The Burkes Pass Heritage Trust
{{Mackenzie District Mackenzie District Mountain passes of New Zealand Transport in Canterbury, New Zealand Landforms of Canterbury, New Zealand