Maori legend says Taranaki was once called Pukeonaki and lived in the centre of the North Island alongside Ruapehu, Tongariro, and the forested peak Pihanga. Both Pukeonaki and Tongariro fell in love with Pihanga. They fought, and Tongariro won. Pukeonaki fled westward, carving river valleys as he went, and when he resurfaced near the coast he fell in love with the nearby Pouakai Range. The legend explains both the mountain's isolation and the radial river pattern that drains from its slopes in every direction. European contact began in 1770 when Captain James Cook spotted the peak from HMS Endeavour and named it Mount Egmont. In 1865, the mountain and surrounding land were seized by the Crown following the New Zealand Wars as punishment for Maori resistance, a confiscation that would take more than 150 years to formally redress.

The park's origins were pragmatic, not romantic. By the 1870s, settlers had cleared and burned so much of the Taranaki lowlands that the remaining forest was under threat. In 1881, all land within 9.6 kilometers of the summit was declared a forest reserve, primarily to protect timber. The Taranaki Scenery Reservation Society pushed for stronger protection, and in 1900 the Egmont National Park Act made it one of the oldest national parks in New Zealand. The Pouakai and Kaitake ranges were added later. In January 2025, the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Act transformed the park into something unprecedented: a legal entity that owns itself. Te Topuni Kokorangi, a governance body split equally between iwi and Crown representatives, manages it. The act was a Treaty of Waitangi settlement, redressing 160 years of grievance over confiscated land.

The park covers not one but three volcanic centres. Taranaki Maunga, the youngest at roughly 200,000 years old, dominates the skyline at 2,518 meters. To the northwest stands the Pouakai Range, last active 230,000 years ago, home to the Ahukawakawa Swamp, a rare high-altitude sphagnum wetland at 920 meters. Further northwest, the Kaitake Range last erupted over 500,000 years ago and harbours a coastal ecosystem entirely different from the rest of the park: nikau palms, kohekohe, puriri, and titoke trees that grow nowhere else in the park's boundaries. The Kaitake also holds two plant species found nowhere else in the Taranaki district. Together, the three volcanic centres span over a million years of geological history, each with distinct ecology layered by altitude and exposure.

New Zealand's forests are famous for their beech trees, but Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki has none. The total absence of the genus Nothofagus makes this park unusual nationally. Instead, northern rata, rimu, and broadleaf species dominate the lower slopes, with kamahi taking over in the stunted high-altitude forests. Crown ferns carpet the understory of the old-growth zones. Above the treeline, alpine shrubland and tussock give way to bare volcanic rock and permanent ice. The fauna matches the forest's richness: blue duck, North Island brown kiwi, and fernbird shelter here, along with nearly half of New Zealand's indigenous freshwater fish species. In 2022, the park became the first national park in the country declared free of feral goats, a milestone in a decades-long battle against introduced predators that also targets possums, stoats, and ferrets through over 1,060 traps.

The park draws an estimated 400,000 visitors a year. The Pouakai Circuit, a 25-kilometer track taking two to three days, passes through forest, alpine tussock, and the Ahukawakawa Swamp, with the famous tarn that reflects Taranaki Maunga on still mornings. The Around the Mountain Circuit is a 52-kilometer, five- to seven-day loop that circles the entire volcano through forest, river crossings, and alpine terrain. And then there is the summit itself: an eight- to ten-hour round trip that requires crampons and ice axes even in summer, with ice present year-round in the crater. The very summit is sacred to Maori, and climbing to the highest point is considered culturally offensive. Manganui Ski Area, run entirely by volunteers from the Stratford Mountain Club, offers 59 hectares of skiable terrain between 1,250 and 1,680 meters, with a season from June to October that depends entirely on snowfall.