Joshua (Josh) Morgan was the pioneer surveyor who paved the way for the road through the Tāngarākau Gorge. While leading the survey party in this remote area, Morgan suffered severe stomach cramps on 24 February 1893. Two assistants, Laing and Telfer, rushed the 50 km trek through rough bush to the coast at Urenui to bring medicine. This seemed to have little effect and so another assistant, Archie Thompson, set out a week later to obtain further medical supplies as Morgan was now delirious. On his return journey Thompson met Fred Willison, Morgan's chain man, who brought him the sad news that Morgan had died of peritonitis. The men returned with Constable C. G. Bleasel and buried the 35-year-old Morgan where he had died, near the junction of the Paparata and Tāngarākau rivers. In 1895, two years after Morgan's death, the road to Whangamōmona was built and opened along the route he had surveyed. Nearly sixty years later, Morgan's widow Annie died in Auckland at the age of 85 and her ashes were placed at her husband's grave deep in the bush-covered slopes of the Tāngarākau Gorge.
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