The town plans of New Zealand always seem to surprise me. This 1874 plan of Hyde is a near perfect strip of geometry with horizontal rectangles blocked in between the streets of Stowe, Woburn, Dover and Arundel. Surrounded by plentiful white space no geographical features are visible. The 1891 plan expands adding rivers, swamps, paddocks, tailings, and lagoons for context. Revealing the expansion of this boom town. Hyde was originally a gold mining boom town of the 1860s Otago gold rush. Originally called ‘Eight Mile’ because of the towns distance from the Hamilton’s Gold Mine. The mine employed a large proportion of the town’s residents. The Cromwell–Dunedin express also crashed near the town on 4 June 1943. The train, which was travelling too fast, derailed on a corner and the carriages piled into each other. Many people were injured, and 24 were killed. Today, the town is booming with a new kind of rush as a cyclist stop on the Otago rail trail. Source NZMS 16 Hyde 1874 and 1891 were sourced from the UoA geodatahub and is subject to re-use under attribution CC-BY 4.0. #aotearoa #cycletrail #goldmining #history #heritage #historicmaps #hyde #mining #newzealand #nzhistory #oldmaps #papertowns #townplan #nzarchaeology #otago #otagorailtrail https://www.instagram.com/p/BopvDoCgg8F/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=14bequnuuh9jr
