Norton is a

commuter town A commuter town is a populated area that is primarily residential rather than commercial or industrial. Routine travel from home to work and back is called commuting, which is where the term comes from. A commuter town may be called by many o ...

and suburb of

Harare Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 Zimbabwe census, 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metrop ...

in the province of

Mashonaland West Mashonaland West is a province of Zimbabwe. It has an area of 57,441 km² and a population of approximately 1.9 million (2022). Chinhoyi is the capital of the province. Demographics Geography Districts Mashonaland West is divid ...

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

. It is located about 40 km west of Harare on the main road and

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

line connecting Harare and

Bulawayo Bulawayo (, ; ) is the second largest city in Zimbabwe, and the largest city in the country's Matabeleland region. The city's population is disputed; the 2022 census listed it at 665,940, while the Bulawayo City Council claimed it to be about ...

Demographics

According to the 1982 Population Census, the town had a population of 12,360. This rose to 20,405 in the 1992 census 44,054 in the 2002 census, and 67,591 in the 2012 census.

History

The settlement began in 1914 when a railway siding was built. The town was named after the Norton family who were farming in the area since the 1890s and were killed in the First ''Chimurenga'' in 1896. The town grew as an administrative and commercial hub in a rich agricultural area. It later developed into a key industrial centre due to its proximity to water and power supplies, with a main intake point from the

Lake Kariba Lake Kariba is the world's largest artificial lake and reservoir by volume. It lies upstream from the mouth of the Zambezi river on the Indian Ocean, along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Lake Kariba was filled between 1958 and 1963 fo ...

hydroelectric dam to the national grid located nearby. The construction of the nearby Lake Chivero dam provided a further boost to development. It also lies adjacent to Lake Manyame.

Economy

The farm lands surrounding the town produce a range of crops including

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

and

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

, and cattle rearing for the beef and dairy industries is also an important element of the local economy. From the 1960s onward, a large pulp and paper mill, a brewery and several factories were established in the town. However, these were badly hit by the economic crisis of the late 2000s.

Sport

The Norton-based MWOS compete in the

Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League is the top professional division of the Zimbabwe Football Association. It was founded in 1980, as a successor to the 1962 formed ''Rhodesia National Football League.'' It is currently sponsored by Delta Beverages ...

, playing at the Ngoni Stadium.

References

External links

Norton Constituency Profile
(2011) Populated places in Mashonaland West Province 1914 establishments in Southern Rhodesia {{Zimbabwe-geo-stub