Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve

Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve is a nature reserve of consisting of veld and koppies (hills) run by the Johannesburg City Parks and is located south of Johannesburg. Home to many species of flora and bird life, it is also home to large and small mammals such as blesbok, zebra, wildebeest and duiker. The reserve has a number of hikes and trails, archaeological sites with the Bloubos spruit flowing through the area.HistoryPrehistory saw the area inhabited by stone age man who hunted in the area with the location claimed to have the highest concentration of identified Iron Age sites on the Witwatersrand with the discovery of artefacts dating back 250,000 years.The Sotho-Tswana peoples would later settle in the area in the 1400s and would leave the location around 1800 when possibly climate changes and the movement of more militant tribes into the area saw their departure to Botswana. Their lifestyle consisted of animal husbandry and the growing millet, sorghum and later maize imported into Africa by the Portuguese traders.Around 1850, Voorttrekker Sarel Marais bought land on a western portion of the Rietvlei farm part of which is the reserve today, and used it for grazing and peach farming. His descendants would eventually sell the farm in 1914 to the Quilliam family who used it for dairy farming and as a piggery. By 1939, the Quilliam family had sold the land to the City of Johannesburg.