Haast-Hollyford road

Planned routes for the road follow either the coastline or inland valleys but both end up going through the Hollyford Valley.

The Haast-Hollyford road or Haast-Hollyford Highway is a long-standing proposal to link Haast via the Hollyford Valley to Milford Sound and Te Anau in the South Island of New Zealand. Proposals for this road have been mooted since the 1880s.

Proposals for the road have been suggested since the 1870s.[1] The road was originally seen as the only land access to the port of Jackson Bay from the Otago goldfields, but it has never been possible to cross the Main Divide to Lake Wakatipu. A road has, however, been constructed north from Lake Te Anau to Milford Sound, which is a major tourist route, and most more recent proposals have focussed on extending this road north. The South Island Local Bodies Association regularly passed remits from the 1950s through to the 1980s in support of a road but the Ministry of Works, a government department responsible for road building during that period, repeatedly stated that such a road was not a priority for funding.[2]

  1. ^ Cook, Marjorie (20 February 2010). "Highway through heritage – Haast". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
  2. ^ "Road proposals similar to smashing the Mona Lisa" (Press release). Forest and Bird. 11 April 2001.