The Taradale Marketing Association is putting together the finishing touches to plans for celebrations next weekend to mark the area's 130th anniversary.
Celebrations will be held in the Taradale shopping centre on Saturday, the day after the 130th anniversary of the establishment of the Taradale Town Board, part of the Hawke's Bay County, on December 2, 1886.
But the name dates back almost 30 years earlier to the arrival of Irish immigrant Henry Alley, who in 1858 leased a lot from William Colenso who had the previous year purchased a block which stretched from the Puketapu Hills to the Tutaekuri River and what is now known as Guppy Rd.
Mr Alley's move initiated subdivision and the establishment of a township he named Taradale, after the Hill of Tara, in his native County Meath, Ireland, less than 50km northwest of Dublin. About the same time, Henry Stokes Tiffen bought land he named Greenmeadows.
Separated from Napier by the large lagoon and mudflats known historically as Te Whanganui a Orotu, which stretched across to Scinde Island (today known as Hospital and Bluff hills), Taradale grew as an integral part of access to the inland from Napier, via what became known as Taradale Road, and Awatoto and Meeanee on the southern shores of the lagoon.