Otira is a small township fifteen kilometres north of Arthur's Pass in the central South Island of New Zealand. It is on the northern approach to the pass, a saddle between the Otira and Bealey Rivers high in the Southern Alps. Otira means "o" (place of) and "tira"(the travellers).
Otira was originally a stop on the Cobb and Co stagecoach from Canterbury to the West Coast. The Midland Line was extended from Stillwater to Jacksons in 1894 and then Otira in 1899, when the pass was navigated by coach from Otira until the railway tunnel opened in 1923. During construction of the tunnel, Otira housed about 600 workers and their families.
In the 1950s the town had a population of about 350, but this had dropped to 11 in 1988. It recovered to 87 for Otira and its surrounds in the 2006 census, an increase of 30 from 2001,[3] and was 44 in 2010.[4]
The township is principally old Railways housing, much of which was constructed in Hamilton and shipped south to be assembled on site. As well as the railway station, there is a pub, a fire station, and 18 houses, 14 of them tenanted in 2010.[4]
On the 'town' side of Ōtira (as opposed to the village side) the old post office still stands as does the post masters house. The post office has been refurbished into an art gallery, 'John Burns Gallery of Modern Art'. The complex exhibits world class art which is a surprise to many visitors, housed as it is in the middle of the southern alps.
Close to the town are two major feats of civil engineering: the Otira Tunnel, and the Otira Viaduct.
Part of the Otira village was bought by Bill and Christine Hennah in 1998 for NZ$80,000, and in 2010 was put up for sale with an asking price of NZ$1.5 million.
In 2014 Lester Rowntree bought 21 hectares, including hotel, 18 houses, hall and fire station. Rowntree saw it as the perfect place to display his huge collection of historical memorabilia and create a new life for the town as a tourist and educational attraction.
The trains made it to Otira in 1899 and his hotel was then called the Otira Terminus Hotel. He's changed the name to the Otira Stagecoach Hotel. In 1908 they started digging the rail tunnel and the town's population boomed to 700. Meanwhile, the stagecoaches did the hard slog over the ranges while the work went on underground.
Rowntree talks poignantly of the day in 1923 when the rail tunnel opened.
"On opening day, five stagecoaches left this hotel and they never came back again. And that was the end. This was the very last place where commercial coaching was done."
Rowntree wants to bring those days alive again for visitors. He talks of a museum, of an auditorium with live shows. "We want to make this a journey to the past, we want to put a huge auditorium up here, and do a daily show, showing the building of the roads and the stagecoach time and the building of the rail tunnel."
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