Sea levels began to rise 7,000 years ago, separating the individual islands in the group.

[3][4] In Māori mythology, Ōhau (West Island) is the final glimpse of New Zealand seen by departing spirits, after leaving the world at Cape Reinga / Te Rerenga Wairua.

[5] Members of Ngāti Kurī would periodically come to the islands as a refuge during times of warfare, and to harvest hāpuku, seabirds and eggs.

[3] Dutch explorer Abel Tasman bestowed the name Drie Koningen Eyland (Three Kings Island) on 6 January 1643, three weeks after he became the first European known to have seen New Zealand.

As it was the Twelfth Night feast of the Epiphany, the day the biblical three kings known as the wise men visited Christ the child, he named the main island accordingly.

[4] Since Tasman's visit, several European ships sighted the island, such as French botanist Jacques Labillardière on board the Recherche in 1793.

[3] Tame Porena (also known as Tom Bowline) married Taiakiaki's granddaughter, and settled on the islands with his family of twelve children in the 1830s and 1840s, establishing large gardens, until starvation forced them to relocate to the mainland.

[4][3] This led Baden Powell of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, who visited in a group, to petition the government to deal with the goat population.

[5] The surrounding sea has very clear visibility and contains teeming fish life, attracting hundreds of divers.

The second largest island of the group, at 0.38 square kilometres (0.15 sq mi) and a height of 207 metres (679 ft).

Near Cape Reinga on the mainland, sometimes translated as the underworld, is a gnarled Pōhutukawa tree reputed to be more than 800 years old.

In 1945, G. T. S. Baylis made a remarkable discovery on the Three Kings Islands, when he found the last remaining specimen anywhere of a tree which is now called Pennantia baylisiana, a kaikomako.

About 35% of its beetle species are found nowhere else, and there are six endemic genera: Gourlayia (Carabidae), Heterodoxa and Pseudopisalia (both Staphylinidae), Partystona and Zomedes (both Tenebrionidae) and Tribasileus (Anthribidae).

Many marine invertebrates found around the islands are also endemic, such as the molluscs Haliotis pirimoana (Manawatāwhi pāua)[8][9] and Penion lineatus.

These include the flax snail, Placostylus bollonsi Suter[12] Three Kings Island is a nature reserve administered by the Department of Conservation.