Located in the Mpumalanga region of South Africa, Pilgrim’s Rest is a small town with a very colorful and exciting history. In 1873 the town and surrounding area was densely populated with prospectors all hoping to make their fortunes in the second of the Transvaal gold fields. It was estimated that in the beginning of 1874 there were some 1500 prospectors working around 4000 claims. As so often happens when an influx of potential customers increases the population of a town, no matter how temporarily, businesses appear overnight to take advantage of the boom, charging outrageous prices that the many hopefuls will pay in order to get the items they need to keep working their claims and survive another week or two. The 1870 gold rush was not the first time the area had been the site of digging. Evidence of mining of the quartz reefs in ancient times were revealed during the most recent efforts to retrieve the gold buried within the soil of the town and surrounding area, as well as other parts of South Africa. Though who the ancient miners were is unknown, it has been established that the region of Mpumalanga was part of a transit corridor that moved gold from South Africa to Arabia, India and Phoenicia.

Today, the town is a tourist location that takes visitors back in time to the days of the gold rush in the 1870’s. When it first became a tourist attraction in 1970 it was changed very little from its heyday and is now a protected historical site. In 1986 the town was declared a National Monument and since then a concerted effort has been made by curators, historians, architects and other interested parties to ensure the integrity of its history is preserved at all times. It is said that there is still gold in the ground, which is exciting for visitors to contemplate as they stand on the very site where 150 years earlier men, women and children were frantically digging and panning for the elusive solid nuggets that would make them instantly rich beyond their wildest dreams. The scars of the frantic digging for gold by many prospectors are still obvious despite the passage of time, and are just a part of what makes the town unique and interesting.