National park
Silvermine Nature Reserve
Mountain valley reserve where a seventeenth-century hunt for silver left empty shafts and a lasting name.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to Silvermine Nature Reserve in Cape Town opens with the Dutch East India Company sinking three shafts into this mountainside in 1687, convinced ore samples meant silver worth mining. It follows the company's speculation as the digging drags on and the valley keeps a name built on a promise the rock never paid out. Two centuries later a different kind of engineering returns to the same valley, damming its stream for a reservoir that still rings the hillside with pines today.
This audio guide was created using AI.