Town approximately halfway between Hokianga and the Bay of Islands. Māori historical associations are significant. The northern war leader Hōne Heke retired and died in Kaikohe in 1850. A memorial on Kaikohe’s 300-metre-high hill celebrates his grandnephew, Hōne Heke Ngāpua, a member of parliament and active supporter of the Māori parliamentary movement known as Kotahitanga. Kaikohe was a small Ngāpuhi settlement until a rail link south was made in 1914 and dairy farming developed. After the First World War returned servicemen settled there, and then in the Second World War it was a base for an American army hospital and air force bomber unit.
