History category
Heritage sites
Landmarks and conserved places.
Listings
6 listed05 · 1777 — Gordon’s koppie
Captain Robert Jacob Gordon of the Dutch East India Company travelled the Kraai River near the later town and had a panorama of the Camdeboo Mountains drawn from a koppie about 7 km from Aberdeen, later called Gordon’s koppie, near the N9 towards Graaff-Reinet.
17 · 1894–1898 — Anglican church, market hall, court and post office
Artefacts lists an Anglican church (1894), the market hall and Claremont House / Pagel House (1897), and the magistrate’s court and post office (1898), beside the Wesleyan church of 1882.
18 · 1895–1913 — Aberdeen Road station and stock fairs
Brown & Brown’s guides, quoted by a University of the Free State study, place Aberdeen Road station 21 miles from town, with a cart four times a week, two hotels and four churches.
23 · 1903–1941 — Jewish cemetery
Beside the main cemetery, the Aberdeen cemeteries page records a Jewish burial ground of 20 graves, with deaths from 1903 to 1941.
31 · 1950s — Wilke’s zoo and the Victoria cinema
The Free State study, citing Viviers, describes Frank Wilke’s Aberdeen Zoo in the 1950s, drawing thousands of visitors a year and linked to Pagel’s Circus.
33 · Water & Fonteinbos — Die Oog and the local nature reserve
Fonteinbos Nature Reserve (about 1 500 ha on the Kraai River, just outside town) is described in public tourism notes as both a reserve and the catchment of a spring, Die Oog, that supplies the town.