About Fox Glacier
The Pioneering Past
"Next day, the 12th, we started from Batson's house on staunch river-bred horses owned by the well known mailman Jock Adamson. It was an ideal day. The Glacier was a picture. We looked at it with delight, almost with amazement, and words seemed inadequate to express our admiration. Our pace, owing to the nature of the track, was a walking one. We made the Fox Valley shortly after 2 o'clock, when Mr and Mrs Williams gave us a hearty greeting followed by a hearty dinner. Being then in a better frame of mind to view the landscape, we found we were in a haven of perfect rest. Bush fires were ablaze and the rising smoke lent to the surrounding mountains and the untidy tumbling ice of the Fox Glacier a lovely blue tint.."
12 January, 1906 - Mr Tom Seddon
Before Europeans arrived on the West Coast the region was thinly occupied by Maori; predominantly refugees from the tribal wars in the East.
While Abel Tasman first came across Westland in 1642, it was not until 1859 that a ship's log recorded the sight of the great glaciers. Explorers seeking fertile farming land and geologists drawn by the wilderness landscapes explored and named the glaciers but it wasn't until gold was discovered in 1864 that South Westland's isolation was truly challenged.
Okarito, Five Mile and Gillespie's gold-towns boomed with around 16,000 hopeful miners. However, while some huge vast fortunes were made, only 18 months later most miners left the Coast totally disillusioned, many having spent their infrequent earnings in the one of the copious makeshift bars that lined the rough streets. Those hardy folk who remained began to look beyond gold to seek a living from farming, saw milling, shops & tourism.
Earliest travelers stayed in guestrooms in local farmers' houses. Eventually hotels were built while entrepreneurial young men began guiding excursions onto the ice. And by the 1900s, tracks and bridges had been built to provide access onto the glaciers.
