From plaque:
Long Distance Ice Skating Anyone
Twenty thousand years ago, you could have ice skated the circuit from here to Arrowtown, Kingston, Glenorchy and back year-round - jumping a few Wakatipu Glacier crevasses en route. Wakatipu Glacier then stood up to a kilometre higher than the lake does now, with only the top of Queenstown Hill ice-free. Five thousand years later, a steep tongue of the retreating glacier's ice still filled the narrow gorge in front of you, sculpting and plucking its steep sides.
Early settlers who had battled through the gorge's dense matagouri, speargrass and scrub to reach Wakatipu's gold fields and Arrowtown named it Blowho Gully. These days, the road makes going through the gully a breeze.
Gold
Gold drew thousands to the Wakatipu from 1862. The Arrow River rush was first, but the Shotover soon after proved to be the second richest river in the world.
Thomas Arthur and Henry Redfern stuck gold at Arthurs Point, at the end of this gorge, on November 16, 1862. Within eight days, they took over 210 ounces (6 kgs). Thousands followed them, but some preferred to earn by fear not sweat.
Philip Levy's gang specialized in murder and theft, tossing victims' bodies in the rapids below their Kawarau River outpost. Several Arrow gangs, used picks and shovels to force others off the best claims
Add floods, landslides, limbs lost to frostbite, typhoid, pneumonia, wagon accidents... and life was no picnic! Once the easy gold was won, many miners never did find their fortune. But their toils left tracks and relics we still enjoy today.
Julien Bourdeau
This Canadian storekeeper and packer was a legend. He and his horses carried everything from mail and porridge to meat and timber along the often treacherous Skippers track for almost 50 years. Extending credit to unsuccessful miners put him into bankruptcy more than once. He carried in his final load of mail from Queenstown to Skippers on September 9, 1916 - age 86 - then went to home, went to bed and peacefully died.
Coronet Peak
Sir William Hamilton -- inventor of the famous Hamilton jet -- was the brains behind the concoction of driving drums, pulley trains, sprockets and other obscure parts put together to build Coronet Peak's first rope tow in 1947.
This was the birth of commercial skiing in New Zealand. Fifteen years later, the country's first double chairlift was installed. Snow making began in 1991 and by 2004, machine-made snow could over 52 hectares of Coronet Peak trails