Originally known as the "Hottentots-Holland" area, it was renamed "Helderberg" by the City of Cape Town following concerns about possible racist connotations in the name (see Hottentot).

The Helderberg planning district of the City of Cape Town includes subsections Macassar, Somerset West, Strand, Gordon's Bay, Sir Lowry's Pass, Stellenbosch Farms, and the Steenbras River valley.

Sir Lowry's Pass is the only crossing, in the form of the N2 motorway, which is the primary route out of the Cape Town area for travellers heading east along the coast of South Africa.

[4] Harmony Flats was originally established to preserve a habitat for the rare and declining geometric tortoise (Psammobates geometricus), which is now locally extinct, but the reserve still protects about 220 species of plants, many of them endangered,[5] as well as a range of animal species, such as the tiny parrot-beaked tortoise (Homopus areolatus), various snakes and a large variety of birds.

Part of the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve lies within the boundaries of the City of Cape Town above Somerset West.

It protects a large portion of Kogelberg Sandstone Fynbos and about 1600 plant species, giving it a floral diversity per unit area that is greater than anywhere else in the world.

However, the lower part of the river flows through developed areas as well as past fynbos and plantations of invasive alien trees.

Animal species found here include small antelope, tortoises, porcupine, hares, mongoose and a variety of birds.

[9] Silwerboomkloof Natural Heritage Site is a small, protected valley (“kloof”), near the Helderberg Nature Reserve, conserving an isolated forest of the rare Silvertree (Leucadendron argenteum), a striking, silver-coloured tree of the Protea family, which is actually indigenous to the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, making the population at Silwerboomkloof an isolated anomaly.

The shoreline is sandy beach with mobile dunes, and the seabed is low sandstone reef with kelp beds and sand sediments.

[10] Van Riebeeck’s outriders found a fertile valley with adequate water in what they named the Tweede Rivier, (now the Lourens River), inhabited by the Khoikhoi Chief Sousoa and his family.

[3] A town developed around the Lourens River and the farm of Vergelegen (Dutch: "remotely situated"), an 18th-century farmhouse built in the historic Cape Dutch style by Willem Adriaan van der Stel, governor of the Cape and son of Simon van der Stel, who gave his name to the nearby town of Stellenbosch.

The farm is now owned by a subsidiary of the large mining company Anglo American, who have restored the farmhouse and continue to produce wines.

[citation needed] The mountain crossing of the Hottentots Holland range was known by the indigenous Khoi people as the Gantouw or Eland's Pass, and was used as a stock route.

Construction began at a site about 2 km to the south of the Hottentots Holland Kloof, by the engineer Charles Michell using convict labour.