Name celebrates industrial heritage
Hydro Rd runs off State Highway 3 near the entrance to the popular picnic spot, Meeting of the Waters.
The road was not always known by this name.
On old survey maps it was marked as Albert Rd and in correspondence between the Taranaki County Council and the Ministry of Works in the early 1960s it was noted as ‘Old Albert Rd’.
However, a letter from the engineers, Saxton & Unwin, to the County Clerk on 10 December 1964 refers to it as Hydro Rd, indicating a formal change had taken place.
The new name was apt, celebrating an important aspect of New Plymouth’s industrial heritage.
In 1901, the New Plymouth Borough Council engaged prominent engineer
Richard Mestayer to design a combined water and electricity supply for the rapidly growing town.
Work began in 1903, the scheme allowing for a joint intake and tunnel from the Waiwhakaiho River.
By 1905 the new water supply system was ready for use, using gravity to supply the borough reservoir on the corner of Mangorei and Junction roads.
This more complex and ambitious electricity scheme was completed in late 1905 and officially opened on the afternoon of 19 January 1906.
A visit to the power house to inspect the generating plant was followed by the switching on at 8pm, “lighting up the streets brilliantly”.
After an inspection of the new illuminations, contractors Brush Electrical Co. entertained a crowd of 50 guests with a banquet dinner in the Town Hall.
By the end of March 1907 not only were the streets lit, but 41 consumers had connected to the system.
Demand grew quickly and with a new tramway system planned for 1916, attention turned to increasing supply.
In 1914 a dam was built on the Mangamahoe Stream (replaced by a new one further downstream in 1918) and finally in 1931 a large concrete-cored earth dam was completed forming Lake Mangamahoe.
The Mangorei hydro-electric plant is now owned by Manawa Energy who operate it remotely from the Bay of Plenty.
It has an annual output of 20.9 gigawatts, enough to power about 3,000 homes.
The rural road is also the base of outdoor training organisation TOPEC and home to the national training centre for Hearing Dogs NZ.
Contributed by the Taranaki Research Centre I Te Pua Wānanga o Taranaki at Puke Ariki. Find this and hundreds of other street histories on NPDC’s Puke Ariki website: https://terangiaoaonunui. pukeariki.com/story-collections/word-onthe-street