The Springfontein Dam wall gives way

23 October 1869 · regional · Beaufort West

After heavy rain in the Kuils River catchment, 76,2 m of the new dam wall caved in and about 572 million gallons - some 2,6 million cubic metres - of muddy water went through the town. It took two and a half hours to drain. Houses, shops, the hospital and the Dutch Reformed mission church were swept away, about GBP20 000 of damage. NOBODY DIED: most of the town was standing on the surviving section of the wall watching it happen. These are BEAUFORT WEST's records, about 91 km from the centre of the ground this project maps, and the article makes no statement about Klaarstroom or the Koup farms. What makes them worth having is that they are the same rainfall regime and the nearest place where somebody wrote the weather down year by year. Read as regional context, not as a record of what fell on these farms. [SRC-262]

Sources

• Wessel Visser, "Between drought and deluge: A history of water provision to Beaufort West, ca. 1858-1955", pp. 1-21 pp. 1-21; supplied as the PDF 31-61-1-SM.pdf