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Extract from ‘New Zealand Heritage’ P.1226-1227 (Settlers in the Manawatu).
The fortunes of these new towns of the Manawatu depending on the railway. Palmerston North developed as the main commercial centre because of its central position on transport routes but during the 1870s this was not yet assured. The rail linkto Foxton, completed in 1876, was extended to connect with Marton and Wanganui during 1878. But Government expenditure on public works was being cut back and plans for a Wellington-Manawatu rail link were shelved. A public meeting in Wellington on September 30 1880 considered the question and formed a committee to meet the Government, Out of this grew the Wellington to Manawatu Railway Company, registered in 1881, which with Government blessing and the endowment of 215,000 acres of land began constructing the line which was completed in November 1886. The location of the endowment lands and pressure from the Palmerston North interests decided the route, in spite of pleas from Foxton residents to connect their towns directly with Wellington. New towns laid out by the company Linton, Shannon, Levin and Plimmerton were all named after Company Directors.
The later group settlements at Sanson by the Hutt Small Farmers Association, and the Douglas Company settlement at Rongotea, never obtained a rail link and ere destined to remain little more than villages. A similar fate befell Bunnythorpe, alias Mugby Junction, laid out on the Manchester Block as the junction with the proposedrailway through the Manawatu Gorge. On this understanding, quarter-acre sections were brought up to #100 each in Mugby Junction and bush was felled along the proposed line. Unfortunately the Corporation could not provide sufficient labour, the project was delayed, and construction of the company’s line helped divert attention to Palmerston North. Mugby Junction evaporated and reverted to the village of Bunnythorpe. The railway through the Gorge was opened in 1891 to connect the Manawatu with Hawkes Bay and the Wairarapa.
By thelate 1880s the present pattern of towns in the Manawatu was complete. During the decade the dairy industry and meat freezing were established as the basis for prosperity. The bush was gradually cleared and settlers penetrated north up the valleys of the Pohandina, Iroua and Rangitikei Rivers east into the foothills of the Tararua Range, and more recently into the coastal sand dunes and swamps which present rather different problems of reclamation. Within a few decades the dense, dark and trackless forests of the Manawatu were transformed into the lasndscape of towns, villages and farms, crisscrossed by the roads and railway.