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Somerset East is situated at the foot of the Bosberg Mountain which rises 820 metres above the town. The origins of the town can be dated back to 1771 when Willem Prinsloo acquired the land at the foot of the Bosberg. The farm was later taken over by Louis Trichardt, who experimented with tobacco production.
Somerset East is the principle centre of the Blue Crane Route Municipality. The Blue Crane (Tetrapteryx paradisea) is a magnificent bird, formerly South Africa’s national bird which has become very rare. The area is a redoubt for this beautiful species.
Somerset East is situated at the foot of the Bosberg Mountain which rises 820 metres above the town. The origins of the town can be dated back to 1771 when Willem Prinsloo acquired the land at the foot of the Bosberg. The farm was later taken over by Louis Trichardt, who experimented with tobacco production. He was so successful in this enterprise that he piqued the interest of the Governor of the Cape, Lord Charles Somerset, who acquired the nieghbouring farm with the intention of supplying the troops who were fighting the Xhosa on the Eastern Frontier of the Cape with this commodity, but the enterprise failed and the farm was closed down in 1824. In 1825 a town was founded on Somerset’s Farm and was named Somerset East after the governor. In 1837 it became the second town in South Africa to be granted municipal status, one month after Beaufort West. Trichart eventually departed with the other Boers of the Eastern Cape on the Great Trek and became a hero of the Afrikaner people; a town in the northern areas of South Africa was named after him.
Somerset East became a bustling centre in the region housing many well regarded education institutions and the old Dutch Reformed Parsonage, a superb example of colonial Georgian architecture, is now a museum with a delightful setting.
The area around Somerset East abounds with beauty spots; the Glen Avon falls outside the town is 85 metres high. The Bosberg is still a well forested oasis on the fringe of the Karoo which is now a nature reserve and offers several delightful hiking trails. The area is still not completely explored, as the town discovered to its dismay in the 1950s. During this time the town was hit by a crime wave that had the police and the populace baffled. This went on for some time until a shepherd was murdered at the summit of the Bosberg and a vagrant arrested for the crime. He took the police to his hideout on the slopes of the Bosberg where he showed them very narrow crack in the mountain that opened up into a sizeable cave that no one else had discovered. In the cave were several items that had been reported stolen? At the opening of his cave, the vagrant who called himself the “Samson of the Bosberg” could view the entire town spread out below him but he was hidden from view. He was later executed for the murder of the shepherd.
Somerset East is surrounded by several game farms, farm stays and hunting concessions. The town is well placed to explore the northern areas of the ado National Park and the South reaches of the Mountain Zebra National Park.
Source: Courtesy Eastern Cape Tourism Board - www.ectb.co.za
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