Town 64 km south-east from Hamilton. The Pātetere block, including the future site of Putaruru, was bought by the Patetere Land Company in the early 1880s, later passing to the Thames Valley Land Company. A settlement emerged about 1886 when the railway line to Rotorua was being constructed. In 1905, after the Crown had acquired surrounding land, a township was surveyed. The Taupo Totara Timber Company built a tramway from its Taupō forests to Putaruru, where it had a mill. Construction of the Arapuni dam on the Waikato River in the 1920s further boosted Putaruru’s population. In the late 1940s the newly established Putaruru Timber Yards built several mills to process wood from exotic forests which had been planted nearby in the 1920s.
Meaning of place name
A contraction of Puta-a-ruru; puta: hole, or to appear; a: after the manner of; ruru: morepork.
