Should you venture up in the mountains of Mpumalanga, you might stumble across a strange little ghost town. Rusted mine shafts, sprawling hillsides, mist-covered graveyards and eerily quaint homes of the forgotten. This is Pilgrim’s Rest and you’re in for a mysterious trip into the history – and mystery – of this little ghost town.
Picture: Expedia
Declared a gold field in the spring of 1873, Pilgrim’s Rest saw a boom in prospectors making their way to and home in the area. Canvas tents and makeshift structures became iron-roofed homes, apothecaries and general stores. Young men with too much time on their hands, too much money and a thirst for more made it their job to collect as much gold as they could.
Picture: Pilgrim’s Rest
By the end of 1874 – a year after the town’s boom –Pilgrim’s Rest was home to some 1 500 prospectors working around 4 000 claims altogether.
Prospectors panned for gold, as was the time, sifting through river shale with pans. It may sound tedious and old-timey, but they weren’t coming up null. The type of gold being found in the area was known as alluvial. Akin to gold dust, this type of gold comes from veins and streams in the mountains. If they were lucky, prospectors might have come across a gold nugget or two in the process.
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Only a few made it big in the gold industry here, however, what with the prospectors en masse and fairly small gold fields.
During the Boer War, Boers had control over the area and in a scramble to get the upper ground on the British, who had them outnumbered and overpowered, they set up a mint, hastily creating the Veld Pond coin. An early currency within the country which, if you’re lucky, your great-grandfather may have one of to this day.
Picture: Veld Pond Coin
Slowly, as the alluvial ran dry, there was a call for mechanised mining at the Belvedere hydro-electric Power Station. This was new and exciting for prospectors, and the power station assisted in the mining of 3175 kg of gold in the area. A feat of massive proportion.
As gold mining boomed, the gold available declined, and over time, people found themselves forced to leave in search of the next big fortune. As the population declined, the town limped its way into abandonment, a husk of the glittering land of prosperity it once was.
Now a national monument and popular tourist destination, remnants of this period in time remain – scars of mining, Belvedere coated in dust, and lost hope.
If you’re ever so lucky, you yourself may stumble across a gold nugget of your own.
Article originally published by Cape Town ETC.
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