HS0007

Did You Know?

The Coleskop Heliograph Site, located near Colesberg in the Northern Cape, was a communication station used during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). Heliographs, which used mirrors to reflect sunlight in coded flashes, were employed by British forces to transmit messages across long distances in the arid South African landscape. Colesberg was a strategic town during the war, as it controlled key railway and road routes between the Cape Colony and the Boer republics. The site on Coleskop hill provided a high vantage point for signaling, linking British garrisons and observation posts in the region.

AI-assisted · may contain inaccuracies