Mount Taranaki (Māori: Taranaki Maunga), officially Taranaki Maunga and also known as Mount Egmont, is a dormant stratovolcano in the Taranaki region on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island. At 2,518 metres (8,261 ft), it is the second highest mountain in the North Island, after Mount Ruapehu. It has a secondary cone, Fanthams Peak (Māori: Panitahi), 1,966 metres (6,450 ft), on its south side.
Name The name Taranaki is from the Māori language. The mountain was named after Rua Taranaki, the first ancestor of the iwi (tribe) called Taranaki, one of several iwi in the region. The Māori word tara means mountain peak, and naki may come from ngaki, meaning "clear of vegetation." It was also named Pukehaupapa ("ice mountain") and Pukeonaki ("hill of Naki") by iwi who lived in the region in "ancient times". Captain Cook named it Mount Egmont on 11 January 1770 after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, a former First Lord of the Admiralty who had supported the concept of an oceanic search for Terra Australis Incognita. Cook described it as "of a prodigious height and its top cover'd with everlasting snow," surrounded by a "flat country ... which afforded a very good aspect, being clothed with wood and verdure". When the French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne saw the mountain on 25 March 1772 he named it Pic Mascarin. He was unaware of Cook's earlier visit. It appeared as Mount Egmont on maps until 29 May 1986, when the name officially became "Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont" following a decision by the Minister of Lands, Koro Wētere. The Egmont name no longer applies to the national park that surrounds the peak, but some geologists still refer to the peak as the Egmont Volcano. As part of the Treaty of Waitangi settlement with Ngā Iwi o Taranaki, a group of tribes in the region, the mountain was officially renamed Taranaki Maunga. The settlement was initialled on 31 March 2023, and ratified by the iwi of Taranaki. The official name changed to Taranaki Maunga on 1 April 2025. Some iwi in the region had referred to the mountain as Taranaki Mounga rather than Taranaki Maunga, per the local Māori dialect.
Geology Mount Taranaki is situated in the sedimentary Taranaki Basin and is part of the Taranaki Volcanic Lineament which has had a 3 cm/year (1.2 in/year) north to south migration over the last 1.75 million years. A Wadati–Benioff zone exists at about 200 km (120 mi) depth and the volcano's magma has the geochemical features of an arc volcano. Under the volcano itself there is high heat flow with only about 10 km (6.2 mi) crustal thickness although this rapidly normalises for continental crust to 35 km (22 mi) east of the volcano and 25 km (16 mi) to the west.
Older volcanoes in the area Mount Taranaki is one of four closely associated Quaternary volcanoes in Taranaki province that have erupted from andesite magmas that have not extensively assimilated enriched crust unlike the cone volcanos of the North Island Volcanic Plateau. It sits on the remains of three older volcanic complexes that lie to the northwest. The Indo-Australian Plate is slowly moving relative to the magma source that feeds these volcanoes. This trend is reflected in Fanthams Peak, the newer secondary cone on the southeast side of Taranaki, which is named after Fanny Fantham, who in 1887 was the first European woman to climb it. The oldest volcanic remnants consist of a series of lava plugs: Paritutu Rock (156 metres), which forms part of New Plymouth's harbour, and the Sugar Loaf Islands close offshore. These have been dated at 1.75 million years. On the coast, 15 kilometres southwest of New Plymouth is the Kaitake Range (682 metres), last active over 500,000 years ago. Nearest to Taranaki is the Pouākai Range. Pouākai may have originated around the same time as Kaitake but remained active until about 210,000 years ago. Much of Pouākai's large ring plain was obliterated by the Taranaki volcano, the hills near Eltham being the only remnant to the south.
Volcanic activity Taranaki is geologically young, having commenced activity approximately 200,000 years ago. The most recent volcanic activity was the production of a lava dome in the crater and its collapse down the side of the mountain in the 1850s or 1860s. Between 1755 and 1800, an eruption sent a pyroclastic flow down the mountain's northeast flanks, and a moderate ash eruption occurred about 1755, of the size of Ruapehu's activity in 1995/1996. The last major eruption occurred around 1655. Recent research has shown that over the last 9,000 years minor eruptions have occurred roughly every 90 years on average, with major eruptions every 500 years. Some of these eruptions may have occurred with very brief warning, of only days or less. The mountain in the last 5,000 years has had 16 tephra producing events. However in the Holocene there have been at least 138 eruptions, and for about 4000 years between 23.1 and 27.3 ka BP that bracket two flank collapses had 28 tephra producing events, some with VEI greater than 4. At least 228 tephra-producing eruptions have occurred over the last 30,000 years.
Eruption and debris avalanches summary As the volcano's major event record is so variable in time, with some major debris avalanches with edifice collapse, being associated with an increase in frequency and size of eruptions, it seems reasonable for the summary to include the full debris avalanche record. There are gaps in the ascertainable eruptive record around the start of the Holocene and little detailed study past 28,000 years ago.
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