Culture and history info
The history of Nyeri Town goes back to the beginning of the 20 th century. At the turn of the century, the area where the built-up area of Nyeri town stands, was in fact the large part of an uninhabited forested area; although there were agricultural holdings to the West (Tetu), to the Northwest (Kihuyo and Ihururu) and Gatitu to the South. The area towards Kiganjo (Northwards) was used for grazing by the Masai pastoralists. The Town began from military activity. A trading caravan had been ambushed, as a result of which one military expedition was sent from Naivasha, through the Nyandarua Mountains, commanded by Colonel Meinertzhagen, and another by M/S Barlow, Hinde and Hested came up from Fort Hall (now Muranga). Meinerzhagen reached the base of Nyeri Hill on 4 th December 1902 and found Hinde camped there. On 6 th December they moved to the present location of the district and provincial administration offices, where they built a fort. The location was considered better placed for defense and easy to obtain provisions. The fort was surrounded by a deep defensive ditch (“Mukaro” in Kikuyu) leading to the present name of the central area of Nyeri Town.
The principal military function lasted up to 1905, but the interim, Asian traders had been attracted to set up business within the area of relative safety i.e. near the fort, and missionaries also moved in at the request of the military officials. On 15th May, 1911, Nyeri was gazetted as a Township, comprising an area of one mile (1.6km) radius from the flag post of what is now the District Commissioner’s office. The year after, the Town became the administrative capital of Nyeri District and also the Headquarters of the Kenya Province of the East Africa Protectorate. The “ Kenya Province” constituted only a small part of what is today the Republic of Kenya. It was in 1913 that the old “Town” borders were established, remaining Nyeri Town’s borders for the next sixty years.
In 1927, the railway reached Kiganjo, which had been chosen as the Nyeri railroad station, both due to its topographical advantages and its closer proximity to the settlers’ farmlands which had developed to the North, after the 1912 relocation of the original Masai inhabitants to areas around Narok. After boundary changes in the Kenya colony, Nyeri Town became the capital of the Kikuyu Province in 1924. Some more changes occurred, so that in 1933, Nyeri was the capital of the then Central province, which included Nanyuki, Meru to the North, Nairobi to the south, and the Machakos/Kitui areas to the east. This remained the case until the boundary revisions in 1961 to 1965, where Nyeri remained the administrative capital of much smaller central region and then central Province.
For all its formative years, the District Commissioner administered Nyeri Town. In June 1954, the Nyeri urban District Council was created. It was a structure whose function was to assist the District Commissioner, and exercised its functions in Nyeri, Kiganjo and Mweiga. In 1963 however, the Urban Council assumed a representative nature with election of councilors. Nyeri Town fully became a Municipality in May 1971, when the first Mayor was elected. The elevation was accompanied by a ten-fold increase in the Town area, from the area defined by 1913 survey and distribution of plots.
As seen from the above brief history, the “birth” of Nyeri was from a military function, but this was quickly replaced by an administrative role. Commercial development started with trading stores located in the shadow of the fort, but this was gradually transformed into the only center of commerce for northern farmlands (until Nanyuki took some of the business) as well as a market center for nearby small scale farming.
Nyeri was elevated to Municipal Council in 1971 (vide Gazette Notice No. 61, 1971) covering an area of about 72sq.km. Before this time, it used to exist as an Urban Council covering only 8sq.km, which included areas surrounding the town center (the present Central Business District (C.B.D) area). Today, Nyeri Municipality covers an area of 200 Sq.km. its bounders coincide with Nyeri Town constituency boundaries. Nyeri can be defined as an urban/rural town, as about 50 per cent of its present area, is rural in nature, with rich agricultural hinterland owned and managed by small scale farmers growing mainly tea and coffee as cash crops. There are vast coffee plantations less than a Kilometer from the Town center around Kingongo and Muringato.
