In addition there are other people having different and diverse religions, cultures and all walks of life who live, trade and work in this agricultural and commercial town.

The city's foundation in its present location was as a result of the military limitations of E. B. Horne's original camp at Mwitari's (homestead).

John B. Griffiths, a Welshman minister previously working at the Kenya coast, petitioned the colonial government to grant the entire Embu region to the Methodists as an exclusive religious sphere.

Griffiths then applied a second time, requesting that the comparatively "peaceful" Meru district be regarded as the exclusive sphere of the United Methodist church.

[4] Griffiths's party arrived at "Fort Meru" in October 1909, to be met by E. B. Horne who allotted the Methodists a plot of land at Ka-Aga.

This was then a spirit forest, known to the Meru as the “place of curse removers [Aga]”, less than two miles north east of his new administrative headquarters.

Griffiths's subsequent report of his expedition described Meru as a land of "hills, valleys, and innumerable streams."

He found it "unlike any other area in Africa: Its hills are covered with ferns, hedges are thick with blackberry bushes, and in the streams watercress abounds .

We have been toiling for fifty years in the sweltering climate of the coast, contending with tremendous difficulties, bitter disappointments and deaths.

[4] In January 1912, Griffiths and Reverend Frank Mimmack occupied the allotted site and begun construction of the first buildings.

In 1956, The Methodist Mission approached the Meru County Council and requested to be allotted land.

Their request was granted and they were allotted 50 acres of land where they established the Methodist Training Institute in 1958.

Meru has a cool subtropical highland climate (Csb) with heavy rainfall from March to May and from October to December.

[6] It is at Rutundu log cabins 20 Kilometre west of Meru City that Prince William proposed to the Duchess of Cambridge.