The township and the pass take their names from
Arthur Dudley Dobson (1841–1934, Sir Arthur from 1931). The Chief Surveyor of
Canterbury Province,
Thomas Cass, had asked Arthur Dobson to find out if there was a pass out of the
Waimakariri watershed into valleys running to the
West Coast. In 1864, Arthur's brother Edward Henry Dobson joined him and accompanied him over the watershed into the valley of the
Ōtira River. A West Coast
Māori chief, Tarapuhi, told Arthur of a pass that
Māori hunting parties occasionally used. When Arthur returned to
Christchurch, he sketched the country he had traversed and included it in a report to Cass. Arthur Dobson did not name the pass, which he found very steep on the western side. Dobson gave the name "Camping Flat" to the site that became the township. When the
West Coast gold rush began in 1864, a committee of businessmen offered a £200 prize for anyone who could find a better or more suitable pass from
Canterbury over the Southern Alps to West Canterbury (the West Coast). At the same time George Dobson, (another brother), was sent to examine every available pass between the watershed of the
Taramakau,
Waimakariri, and the
Hurunui Rivers. After examining passes at the head of every valley he reported that "Arthur's" pass was by far the most suitable for the direct crossing. The township, at the time named Bealey Flats after
Samuel Bealey, the second
Superintendent of Canterbury, was originally built as a construction village for the building of the
Otira Tunnel, which started on 14 January 1908. In 1909 a power station was built below the Devil's Punchbowl Falls to provide electricity for the tunnel construction and for the village itself. The railway from
Christchurch reached Arthur's Pass township in 1914, the Westland section having advanced to
Otira. Construction of the tunnel was very slow: it finished in 1923, and its opening was marked by the
British and Intercolonial Exhibition. The
TranzAlpine passenger railway service passes through Arthur's Pass and the Otira Tunnel as part of its journey from Christchurch to
Greymouth. In 2022,
CNN Travel described the trip as one of the world's great train journeys. In 1929,
Arthur's Pass National Park was established by the Governor-General of New Zealand, as New Zealand's third
national park. An
earthquake measuring 7.1 struck Arthur's Pass on 9 March 1929. Slips closed the road to the west coast for months and there was damage to the railway lines. The earthquake was thought to have occurred due to movement along the Poulter Fault. The
Geographic Board and its predecessor had a policy of omitting possessives and apostrophes in place names. The national park was named Arthur Pass National Park in 1929 and was not officially renamed until 1980. The pass itself was renamed Arthur Pass in 1932 over the objections of Arthur Dobson himself, and the name of the township, post office and railway station was changed to "Arthur Pass" in 1951. This caused an upset with the public, and the old possessive version with the apostrophe, which was still in common use, was reinstated in 1957. On 16 September 1975, the
New Zealand Post Office also adopted the spelling with the apostrophe for the post office in the township. The name is also commonly written with no apostrophe, as Arthurs Pass. ==Demographics==