Nuwekloof Pass (Western Cape)

In 1699 Willem Adriaan van der Stel, the newly appointed Governor, decided to open the valley for farming and found it necessary to upgrade the Pass.

By the 1750s negotiating the Pass had become extremely wearying, and a concerted effort was made to find a route through the kloof which had defeated Pieter Potter almost a hundred years earlier.

The intrepid naturalist, William Burchell, went through in 1811 and recorded it as "a narrow winding defile of about three miles in length, just enough to allow a passage for the Little Berg River on each side of which the mountains rise up abrupt and lofty.

Their rocky sides are thickly clothed with bushes and trees from their very summits down to the water, presenting a beautiful romantic picture adorned with their variety of foliage.

The difficulty of keeping a fire burning, or a candle alight in the waggons, obliged us to remain in the darkness till morning"In 1805 the growing village of Roodezand was renamed 'Tulbagh' and a landdrost was stationed there.

The redoubtable pass builder, Thomas Bain, reconnoitred the kloof in 1855 and suggested a new route along the western side or left bank of the Klein Berg River, a recommendation which was followed in 1859 and 1860, and was to carry traffic for the next hundred years.