One Tree Hill Auckland

One Tree Hill is a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. The residential part of the suburb is located to the east and south-east of Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill, from which it takes its name, with the volcanic peak located within the suburb’s boundaries. The suburb was established in the 1930s.

As well as being one of the city’s largest volcanoes, Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill was one of the most extensively developed Māori pā (village settlements) in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland, and today it is one of the largest pre-European archaeological sites in New Zealand.

At the height of occupation, the pā was home to thousands of people. Its four tihi (summits) were all heavily defended by ditches and wooden palisades. The flanks were shaped into terraces for whare moe (sleeping houses), rua (roofed storage pits) for seasonal storage of kūmara and other crops, tāpapa (garden mounds) and hāngi (earth oven) pits. The terraces, pits and craters and are important archaeological features which are highly sensitive to erosion and visitors must not walk on or through them.

The English name ‘One Tree Hill’ is for the single Monterey Pine which stood at the tihi until it was famously attacked in the 1990s and removed in 2000. In 2016 the Tūpuna Maunga Authority planted a grove of tōtara and pōhutukawa on the same spot, and the intention is that a single tree will ultimately remain when it is able to survive on its own.