Revell Street, Hokitika's main commercial strip, does not run straight. When the town was laid out during the gold rush, the planner - an amateur by most accounts - aligned the road with the coastal sand dunes rather than imposing a grid. The result is a street that bends and kinks its way through town, earning the nickname the Crooked Mile. It should have been corrected decades ago, but Hokitika kept the curve, and today it gives the town center a character that grid-planned towns lack. The buildings along Revell Street reflect layers of ambition: the Carnegie Library building now houses the Hokitika Museum, the historic Government Buildings stand as reminders of a time when this was a regional capital of real importance, and the clock tower presides over a commercial district that has traded gold-rush hustle for the slower commerce of jade shops and cafes. The old fire station has been converted into a boutique hotel. Adaptation, not demolition, is the Hokitika way.

Pounamu - nephrite jade - is found only on the West Coast of the South Island, and its harvest and sale are governed by Ngai Tahu, the local Maori iwi. For Maori, pounamu is taonga, a treasure of deep spiritual and cultural significance, used for tools, weapons, and ornaments for centuries before European contact. Hokitika sits at the center of the pounamu trade today, with jade shops clustered along Weld and Tancred Streets. Buyers need to be alert: some shops sell Canadian jade carved in China, priced attractively but lacking the cultural provenance and geological specificity of genuine West Coast pounamu. For the real thing, the Te Waipounamu Maori Heritage Centre on the corner of Weld and Sewell Streets offers verified pounamu carvings and the chance to watch Ngati Waewae carvers at work, shaping stone that has been pulled from the rivers and mountains of this coast by Maori hands for generations.

Hokitika's modern identity is as a staging point. The town sits on State Highway 6, roughly three hours from Christchurch via Arthur's Pass - a drive through the Southern Alps that ranks among New Zealand's most scenic road trips, with kea parrots harassing cars at the summit and the Waimakariri River gorge narrowing the road to a shelf above the rapids. From Hokitika, the highway runs south along the coast toward Franz Josef Glacier, two hours away, and Fox Glacier at two and a half hours. The Hokitika Gorge, with its electric-blue glacial water, lies 40 minutes inland. Greymouth, the West Coast's largest town, is 40 minutes north, with the reconstructed gold-mining settlement of Shantytown along the way. Lake Kaniere offers calm water and bush walks close to town. Hokitika is small enough that most of it can be explored on foot - a half-day's wander covers the main sights - but the surrounding landscape demands weeks.

The population decline after the gold rush was steep and sustained. Where tens of thousands had crowded the streets and shoreline in the 1860s, modern Hokitika is a town of roughly 3,000. The Westland District's population is growing again, driven by what locals call lifestyle inhabitants - people drawn by affordable land, dramatic scenery, and distance from the pressures of larger cities. Almost 30 percent of the district's ratepayers now live outside Hokitika proper, scattered through the valleys and coastal settlements that surround it. The town has found its equilibrium. It hosts the annual Wildfoods Festival, attracting visitors willing to sample huhu grubs, whitebait patties, and other culinary adventures that the West Coast specializes in. The airport handles small aircraft. Buses connect to Greymouth and Christchurch. The rhythm is unhurried, the weather is wet, and the mountains loom close enough to remind everyone that the landscape - not the town - is the main attraction.