Marton (Māori: Tutaenui) is a town in the Rangitikei district of the Manawatū-Whanganui region of New Zealand's North Island.

The town of Marton is the largest in the Rangitikei district, and began life as a private township in 1866, when shop and housing sections were sold at auction by local landowners.

[2] Marton has always been a service town for the fertile farming lands of the lower Rangitikei Rivers flood plains.

The arrival of the railway in 1878 led to rapid growth in the area, which soon added industries such as engineering, sawmilling, and textile production to its economy.

For three years the small village was known as Tutaenui, named after the stream running through its centre.

In 1869 local citizens changed the name to Marton to honour the birthplace of Captain James Cook in Middlesbrough, marking his landing in New Zealand exactly 100 years earlier.

[4] From the start Marton was an ideal supply centre for district farmers, who first began arriving in the early 1850s.

From butter and wool they moved on to growing wheat in 1863, and big crops led to three flourmills being launched in the area in 1864.

Marton became a home base for the horse industry, with saddlers, wheelwrights, livery stables and coachbuilders competing for business, while Clydesdale and Suffolk Punch sires toured the district to build up the population of plough horses needed as new farms sprang into being.

The move of the railway station in 1898 was followed by a large development of 'Marton Extension', to the south east, from 1907.

Industry developed quietly at first in Marton, starting with flourmilling, brickmaking and wool presses.

They turned out products as diverse as men's shirts, tractor safety cabs, soft drinks, vegetable salads, readymix concrete, field tiles, dog biscuits, knitwear, dried peas, electronic petrol pumps, vegetable digging machinery.

9 km from Marton was the large Lake Alice Hospital for psychiatric patients, which opened in 1950 and closed in 1999.

It included a maximum security unit, and housed hundreds of patients during its 49 years of operation.

Marton’s first newspaper, the Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, was started in 1875, with Alexander McMinn as editor.

Before the 2023 census, Marton Rural had a larger boundary, covering 192.56 km2 (74.35 sq mi).