Very few people have heard of the first borehole sunk in an effort to prove that there were payable deposits of gold in the Free State. This is its story.

Soon after the major discoveries of the Witwatersrand and its expansion east and west the search went further out into the Free State in the hope of finding the continuation of the reefs. Already in the 1890s there was speculative buying of farms to the south of Klerksdorp over the Vaal.