Stratford is located in central Taranaki.

Stratford District is one of New Zealand's smallest local authority areas with a population of 8,889 in the 2006 census.

Stratford District is 2,710 square kilometres.  It has four distinct regions:

• The alpine and bush environment of the Egmont National Park.  
• The dairy farming country of the Egmont ring-plain
• The frontal hill country.  This land lies between the ring plain and the eastern hill country.   It is mostly utilised for sheep and beef farming.
• The relatively steep hill-country of eastern Taranaki, some areas of which are farmed mostly for sheep and beef farming, some areas are abandoned farmland reverting to bush while some land remains in original bush.

It has on its boundary two National Parks:

• Egmont National Park (33,543 ha, established 1900) comprises all the land in a 9-kilometre radius of the volcanic mountain Taranaki/Mount Egmont’s summit and some outlying areas to the north.  The symmetrical cone of the dormant volcano is a provincial landmark.

It has over 140km of tracks that explore a range of landscapes, including forests, wetlands and sub-alpine shrub lands.

• Whanganui National Park (74,231 ha, established 1986) borders the Whanganui River.  It incorporates areas of Crown land, former state forest and a number of former reserves.  The river itself is not part of the park.  

THE HISTORY OF THE STRATFORD DISTRICT

Initial settlements in the Stratford District were small Maori villages in the forested hills as places of refuge in times of war, and for seasonal activities.

While New Plymouth and other coastal regions of Taranaki were settled by Europeans in the 1840s, the densely forested inland Taranaki areas remained relatively isolated until the land wars of the 1860s.  Following those wars the land of Stratford District was in some cases compulsorily purchased and in some cases freely sold.

The site for Stratford town on the north bank of the Patea River was cleared in 1877 and was originally named Stratford-on-Patea. It was named after Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, and the streets were named after Shakespearean characters in keeping with that theme.  By 1906 the population of Stratford had reached almost 6,000.

Other towns throughout the District came into existence as the bush was cleared and new farming districts developed.   Schools, hotels, stores and other community facilities were established but Stratford remained the main town of the area.  From the early years of the twentieth century there was rapid development of the dairy industry and most communities had their own factory.  

Roads through the district were still relatively basic which meant travelling any distance was difficult.  As roads improved throughout the 20th century, the communities in the District gradually began to lose their facilities, as it was either cheaper or easier to travel to larger towns than to maintain those facilities in the smaller towns.

The Forgotten World Highway (State Highway 43) links the towns of Stratford and Taumarunui and later became New Zealand’s first heritage trail.  It passes through the village of Whangamomona which was first settled in 1895, with no road or rail access.  Today there’s the hotel, a café, some historic buildings and about 25 residents.