The town of Arthur's Pass is 4km from the pass of the same name. The 924km pass was on the route used by the Maori to reach Westland, but its European discovery was made by Arthur Dobson in 1864, when the Westland gold rush created enormous pressure to find a corssing over the Southern Alps from Christchurch. A coach road was complete within a year of Dobson's discovery. Later on, the coal and timber trade demanded a railway, which was completed in 1923.

Land in the Upper Waimakariri and Otira Valley was set aside "for national park purposes" as early as 1901. But Arthur's Pass National Park (114,500 hectares) was not officially gazetted until August 1929, after a large public meeting voted unanimously for its creation, and lobbied the government for support. Arthur's Pass was New Zealand's third national park after Tongariro (1894) and Egmont (1900), but the first on the southern island.