Guide: Queenstown
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Gold was discovered in the Queenstown district in 1862. Prospectors flooded in and a makeshift canvas township appeared on the shores of Lake Wakatipu to service them. The area was constituted as a borough in 1866 but prosperity was fleeting. By 1870, miners had begun to disperse and, by the end of the century, the unspectacular industries of farming and mining were the area’s mainstays.
In the latter decades of the 20th century, tourism ramped up, gradually at first but steeply later, injecting a new prosperity. The town has retained its intimate scale and much of its heritage architecture, such that Queenstown is characterised by the historical and the contemporary sitting side by side. This might be thanks to both the constrained topography – the core of the town is small – and the unusual pattern of affluence: the sudden spike of the gold rush and the low hum of sheep farming, followed by the more sustained but equally lucrative rush of tourism. With no industry or even a milk factory to close down, the town took none of the economic hits that led to empty shops, main street demolitions and fractured streetscapes in other towns.
Affluence and opportunity have, of course, brought architects to the area. The 1970s saw the arrival of John Blair, first in the employ of Warren and Mahoney to supervise the Travelodge’s construction; he stayed on as the only architect resident in town.
