31 miles from Port Elizabeth just off the Addo road (R335) is Addo Drift. The drift was the first convenient natural crossing point on the Sundays River when travelling inland from the sea, and was used by wild animals and earlier human inhabitants as a ford. When the Europeans arrived, they followed the same route, outspaning their oxen at a point nearby.
The military post “Ados Drift” appears on the site maps dated 1815. In 1823 one William Wright, an 1820 settler, was given a grant of land near the drift. The earliest record of a license being issued to Zondagh’s River Inn, is the Cape Almanac of 1830.
Great stone marker. Is R335 much traveled these days? I like the R roads.
ReplyDeleteWe have a few of these remaining in Cape Town as well, although not as many as one would think and expect (and hope for!). There is one in Bellville, which was 12 miles from Cape Town and for many years known as Twelfth Mile, before the railway halt was named Durban Road and later remaned Bellville after Charles Bell, painter, heraldist and designer of the rare and highly collectable Cape Triangular Stamp, and for us who trust Old Mutual, their three-achor logo. Another is in Kuils River municipal offices and marked the 15-mile distance from the Castle. Lastly in Durbanville there are four that counted off the distance from Wellington, as the old road ran from Cape Town to Bellville, Durbanville, Wellington and then only would you be in Paarl (no N1 those days!). But these are modern ones of concrete, although the calibration is still imperial.
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