Lutheran missionaries first established mission stations at Finschhafen and moved up the Markham Valley towards the Eastern Highlands.

Between 1916 and 1918 the Kaiapit station was established by the Neuendettelsau Mission Society and by 1919 eighteen Yabem evangelists were resident in the surrounding area and made contact with small groups on the fringes of the Eastern Highlands.

[4][5] In 1934 a small Seventh-day Adventist undertaking was started at Kainantu by a European missionary and ten Solomon Islands evangelists which increased to 40 the following year.

An influenza epidemic resulted in many sorcery accusations and tribal fighting and a new Kainantu government officer (James Taylor) attempted a process of "re-education".

[4][5] In response to the disturbances, the administration amended the Uncontrolled Areas Ordinance (1925) to curtail European movement in the highlands.

In response to the government proclamation, Flierl led a large party of warriors to Kainantu, where they deposited weapons and sorcery items for Aitchison to destroy.

[4][5] In 1943, Japanese patrols partially succeeded in entering the Eastern Highlands and there were numerous air raids on the various airstrips.

Mr. Graham Pople was a former kiap (patrol officer) and Member of the first Papua and New Guinea House of Assembly in 1964 and in 2010 authored The Popleography, an unpublished manuscript.

The Summer Institute of Linguistics had their PNG headquarters at Ukarumpa, just over the hill from Kainantu which was also where the Aiyura agricultural station was established.

Kainantu had its own airstrip, and the town had grown up around this feature, with the district office on the northern side and the hospital at the southern western end.

The Salvation Army were active in the area and out on the road to Okapa they had a block of land on some 200 acres where they were growing potatoes commercially and where they held Bible classes.Probable Palaeozoic metamorphic rocks, the Bena Bena Formation, intruded by Upper Triassic Bismarck Granodiorite and Mount Victor Granodiorite, constitute the basement on which lower Miocene Nasananka Conglomerate and Omaura Greywacke were laid down.

The andesitic Aifunka Volcanics of probable Pliocene age, Pleistocene lake sediments, and Recent alluvial deposits complete the stratigraphical record of the area.

The streams draining the plateau are mature over most of their courses, but near its edge they are deeply incised and flow along youthful valleys.

[13] In 2011 it was reported that 15 men were hacked to death in an early morning raid and their homes at Banana Block, a notorious settlement and was burnt to ashes.

[14][15][16] In 1964 the first election of a national House of Assembly, by universal adult suffrage on a common roll, took place in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea.

[17] Holowei won decisively in the Open Electorate as his first preferences were over twice as many as those of his nearest rival, To'uke, the Tairora candidate.

[17] The final figures in the Kainantu Open Electorate were: Holowei (Barry Holloway) - 8,350 The final figures in the South Markham Special Electorate were: G. Gilmore - 9,311 A later synoptic account told by group of Gadsup men highlights the pertinent features of the first election for a village group of 265 people in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea.

By World War II the best patches of alluvial gold had been worked out, and the few lodes found had not proved economic.

After the war the field provided a good living from both alluvial and lode mining for a small number of Europeans.

In 1994 the centre invested in a variety of new equipment such as a mixer, filter press and pug mill which has reduced the preparation time from weeks to days.

Narrow fairways, sloping roughs, small greens and nearby roads and gardens have made low course scoring rare.

[26] The Cross of Remembrance and a Japanese cannon, is located at the Golf Club in memory of the Australian soldiers who fought in World War Two.

[26][27] In the early 1990s, a small group of expatriates from nearby business began to make improvements to the club including planting new trees and building a new clubhouse.

[26] As a result of the Papua New Guinea policy of nationalizing workforce at the Yonki Dam, the Agricultural Station and the PNG Coffee Research Institute in the late 1990s the number of expatriates in the area decreased.

Ukarumpa missionary station houses the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which aims to translate the Bible into all of Papua New Guinea's numerous languages.