Fraserburg is a town in the

Karoo The Karoo ( ; from the Afrikaans borrowing of the South Khoekhoe !Orakobab or Khoemana word ''ǃ’Aukarob'' "Hardveld") is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its ex ...

region of South Africa's

Northern Cape The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi ...

province. It is located in the

Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality Karoo Hoogland is an administrative area in the Namakwa District of Northern Cape in South Africa. Hoogland an Afrikaans word meaning "highland" and Karoo is a Khoi word meaning "hard" or "dry". The name reflects the area which has dry, arid and ...

. The town has some of the coldest winters in South Africa. The nearest towns are Williston,

Sutherland Sutherland ( gd, Cataibh) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in the Highlands of Scotland. Its county town is Dornoch. Sutherland borders Caithness and Moray Firth to the east, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire (later c ...

, Loxton and Leeu-Gamka, all of which are more than 100 km distant. A particularly good example of a

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...

led house can be found in the town, there are others in the district. The town is also well known for the large number of unique and well-preserved fossil finds that litter the surrounding area.

History

The earliest known inhabitants of the area were the

San people The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zam ...

and their artefacts and rock paintings can still be found in the area. The first Europeans to arrive in the region were Trekboers who arrived in 1759. The first settler to be recorded in these parts was Willem Steenkamp, after whom the Steenkampsberg is named. In 1851 Fraserburg was established on the farm Rietfontein and named after the Scottish immigrant Reverend Colin Fraser. A post office was established in 1858, seven years after the town's founding, this led to an era of development for the area. In 1859 a magistrates office was opened and in 1860 a police station was opened and the town's first medical doctor arrived. In 1861 a prison was opened in the town, it closed 107 years later in 1968. In 1870 the town's first attorney and noted Afrikaans author, H. W. A. Cooper, moved to the town where he wrote the "Boerebrieven" in the Afrikaans newspaper '' Het Volksblad'', writing under the pseudonym Samuel Zwaartman. The town was declared a municipality on June 6, 1862. There are many Victorian era houses in the town dating to the era of the

ostrich feather A plume is a special type of bird feather, possessed by egrets, ostriches, birds of paradise, quetzals, pheasants, peacocks and quails. They often have a decorative or ornamental purpose, commonly used among marching bands and the military, worn ...

and wool booms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1861 the town's distinctive hexagonal stone bell tower was built. Known as ''The Pepperpot'' due to its distinctive shape, the 9 meter tall structure and was used as the magistrate’s private office, the Market Master’s office and functioned as the town's first library. In 1870 a powder magazine, which still stands on the edge of town, was built by the British army in case of war with the neighbouring

Griqua people The Griquas (; af, Griekwa, often confused with ''!Orana'', which is written as ''Korana'' or ''Koranna'') are a subgroup of heterogeneous former Khoe-speaking nations in Southern Africa with a unique origin in the early history of the C ...

and was used during the

Anglo-Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South ...

. In 1938 the town's first power station was installed with 7 Lister Blackstone generators -still present- used to power the town at the time it was connected to the national grid in 1983.

Fossil deposits

In 1968 on a nearby farm a number of very well preserved fossilised footsteps were discovered dating back 250 million years to the Permian Period, most notable of which is a very well preserved '' Bradysaurus'' footprint. Since then a number of fossilised remains of other pre-dinosaur creatures such as

Pareiasaur Pareiasaurs (meaning "cheek lizards") are an extinct clade of large, herbivorous parareptiles. Members of the group were armoured with scutes which covered large areas of the body. They first appeared in southern Pangea during the Middle Permi ...

Dinocephalia Dinocephalians (terrible heads) are a clade of large-bodied early therapsids that flourished in the Early and Middle Permian between 279.5 and 260 million years ago (Ma), but became extinct during the Capitanian mass extinction event. Dinocephal ...

ns, and

Therapsid Therapsida is a major group of eupelycosaurian synapsids that includes mammals, their ancestors and relatives. Many of the traits today seen as unique to mammals had their origin within early therapsids, including limbs that were oriented more ...

s have been discovered in an area regarded as one of the best

paleontological Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of foss ...

sites in South Africa. Fossils of some of the following Permian period reptiles have been found in the area: * ''

Pareiasaurus ''Pareiasaurus'' is an extinct genus of pareiasauromorph reptile from the Permian period. It was a typical member of its family, the pareiasaurids, which take their name from this genus. Fossils have been found in the Beaufort Group. Descript ...

'' * ''

Diictodon ''Diictodon'' is an extinct genus of pylaecephalid dicynodont. These mammal-like synapsids lived during the Late Permian period, approximately 255 million years ago. Fossils have been found in the ''Cistecephalus'' Assemblage Zone of the Mad ...

'' * ''

Struthiocephalus ''Struthiocephalus'' ("Ostrich Head") is an extinct genus of dinocephalian therapsids from the Permian of South Africa. It was a large animal, reaching in body mass. Ecology This animal has the largest head of any tapinocephalid. Brink (195 ...

Geography

Fraserburg is situated at an altitude of above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardis ...

on a high Karoo plateau, north of the Nuweveld Mountains. Similar to -although not to the same extent as- nearby Sutherland, Fraserburg's arid climate and remote location make its night skies among the world's clearest and darkest. The telescopes of the

South African Astronomical Observatory South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) is the national centre for optical and infrared astronomy in South Africa. It was established in 1972. The observatory is run by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. The facility's funct ...

list located roughly 95 km to the west of the town just outside Sutherland. These include the

Southern African Large Telescope The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10-metre class optical telescope designed mainly for spectroscopy. It consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments each with a 1-metre inscribed diameter, resulting in a total hexagonal mirror of 11.1 ...

(SALT), the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere.SALT home page
/ref>

Climate

Fraserburg has an average yearly temperature of 13.9 °C and an average annual minimum temperature of 6 °C; Snowfall is common in winter. On average the town's warmest month is January with an average temperature of 21.7 °C, the coolest month tends to be June, with an average temperature of 6.7 °C. Fraserburg has a Tropical and Subtropical Desert Climate (

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, nota ...

'' ''BWk'''').

Notable residents

Notable residents of Fraserburg include: * A.G. Visser, famous Afrikaans poet was born in Fraserburg. * Jan S. Marais, banker and politician was born in Fraserburg.

Notes

External links

Tourism website
{{Authority control Populated places in the Karoo Hoogland Local Municipality Karoo Populated places established in 1851 1851 establishments in the Cape Colony