Ohakune is a small town at the southern end of Tongariro National Park, close to the southwestern slopes of the active volcano Mount Ruapehu, in the North Island of New Zealand.

A rural service town known as New Zealand's Carrot Capital,[3] Ohakune is a popular base in winter for skiers using the ski fields (particularly Turoa) of Mount Ruapehu and in summer for trampers hiking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.

In 2019 the New Zealand Geographic Board changed the official name to Ōhakune, indicating that the first letter was a long vowel, but swiftly reverted to Ohakune without a macron when Ngāti Rangi objected.

[4][5][6] The lands to the south and west of Mount Ruapehu were historically inhabited by the Māori of the Ngāti Rangi iwi.

[7] Around the middle of the seventeenth century a marae at Rangataua, a small town about five kilometres south-east of Ohakune, was attacked and the inhabitants were driven from their homes by raiders from the Ngāti Raukawa, an iwi from farther east in Manawatū.

Around 75 of the village's population were slain and the dozen or so survivors fled to Maungarongo and established a pā on the present site of the town of Ohakune.

Settlement of the town commenced in the early 1890s around the confluence of the Mangawhero and Mangateitei rivers, along the road from Raetihi to Taumarunui.

[12][13] The period of railway construction activities was followed quickly by intensive timber milling; as the forest was cleared, cattle and sheep were introduced and farming progressed.

A relief train was sent along the branch line from Ohakune to rescue hundreds of people, many of whom were temporarily blinded by smoke and had sought shelter in waterways.

[18] In the 1980s a section of the trunk line between Ohakune and Horopito was realigned, with three viaducts replaced to handle higher loads and speeds.

[20] The tramway they built to remove logs from the bush now forms part of Te Ara Mangawhero, a new cycling and walking track between Ohakune and Mount Ruapehu.

[19] From the early 1900s, Chinese began to settle in Ohakune, which had fertile, loamy volcanic soil good for growing crops.

Chinese market gardeners began to lease recently deforested land, removing stumps, improving the soil and then growing oats, root vegetables and cabbages.

Growers were contracted to supply vegetables to New Zealand and Allied Forces in the Pacific, and to the army base at Waiouru.

Many Chinese growers left the area, often moving to Pukekohe, and the percentage of gardens in Ohakune run by Europeans increased.

[31] Both rivers in the town burst their banks, topsoil on market gardens was washed away, and huge quantities of silt and "driftwood" (probably 'slash', waste wood from forestry) were deposited on the streets.

[32][33] The Waimarino Acclimatisation Society blamed the floods on removal of native bush on Mount Ruapehu, leading to erosion.

In 1910 the Ohakune Ruapehu Alpine Club created a track, and for years there were funding requests, engineering reports and discussions with the Tongariro National Park Board and the government.

[54][55] However, by 2023, vegetable growers in Ohakune said they were wondering if their businesses were still viable, citing increases in the price of fuel, fertiliser, sprays, power and other things needed to produce the crops, increasing compliance costs, as well as the difficulty of finding staff and rising costs of wages.

Ohakune caters for various summer activities, and provides access for trampers hiking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.

It was created as a way to boost the town after eruptions of Mount Ruapehu in 1995 and 1996, plus several years of poor snowfall, caused the local economy to shrink by 20%.

Ohakune Mardi Gras has also been held since 1996, when it was organised as a way to bring visitors in after the Ruapehu eruptions damaged tourism.

It is a free festival screening short films and featuring speakers on topics relating to low-budget film-making and story telling.

[64] This is reputedly the world's largest model carrot: it was originally constructed as a prop for a television advertisement for the ANZ Bank in the early 1980s.

The park features a playground with a carrot-shaped car and fibreglass vegetable people: a swede, a potato, a Brussels sprout and a parsnip, representing crops grown in Ohakune.

There are information boards illustrating the district's history of market gardens and forestry, and the park also has picnic spots, a confidence course and a BMX track.

[67][68][69] There is a war memorial in the form of a large arched gate on Clyde Street at the entrance to Jubilee Park.

The memorial was officially opened in October 1932, with marble tablets on it listing the names of 26 men who had enlisted in the district and died during World War 1.

[79] In 1998, the Big Carrot featured on one of a set of ten postage stamps depicting New Zealand town icons.