Natural feature
Maclear's Beacon
Hand-stacked stone cairn atop a mountain, once painted black as a survey marker for measuring the Earth's curvature.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to Maclear's Beacon atop Table Mountain in Cape Town opens with two American hikers stranded near the cairn after the last cable car left on the night of 22 July 2026, and the volunteers who climbed up to find them. It then reaches back to the 1840s, when the Cape's Astronomer Royal, Thomas Maclear, and his assistant William Mann built the stone beacon to settle a real scientific dispute about the Earth's true shape. Stand beside the five-metre stack of hand-piled rock, once painted black so it could be sighted from kilometres away.
This audio guide was created using AI.