Ongarue
locality in New Zealand
Ongarue (Māori: Ōngarue) is a rural community in the Ruapehu District and Manawatū-Whanganui region of New Zealand's North Island. It is located south of Te Kūiti and Waimiha, and north of Taumarunui.
The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage gives a translation of "place of shaking" (i.e. an earthquake) for Ōngarue.
Ongarue is on the North Island Main Trunk Railway. The Ongarue railway station operated from 1901 to 1975. On 6 July 1923, south of the township, an express train hit a landslide; the resulting Ongarue railway disaster killed 17 people, at the time the worst loss of life on New Zealand's railway. It remains the country's third-worst railway disaster.
The village formerly had an Ellis and Burnand sawmill. From 1922 to 1958, the Ellis and Burnand Tramway, an extensive bush tramway, served this mill and connected with the Main Trunk railway.
“Ongarue” enters the record as locality in New Zealand. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ongarue, locality and Zealand can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25660917. The Library of Congress control number is no2026076660. Authority coordinates are -38.714, 175.277. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1901, 1975, 1923 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ongarue” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.