Long before man ever travelled up the pass, herds of eland, searching for greener pastures, crossed here in the winter months. Traditionally migratory elephants led by the herds matriarch, would make their way down to their grazing grounds on the Cape Flats. A Khoi tribe, known as Gantauwers (People of the Eland) also followed this pass. They called the path T’kanna Ouwe or Gantouw, ‘Gan’ being the Khoi word for eland and ‘touw’ the Khoi word for path. Later travellers also took up this meaning, calling it the Elandspat (path of the eland). Later still - ox wagon travellers called it the ‘Hottentots Holland Kloof.
It was early cattle buyers like Hendrik Lacus and Jeronimus Cruse, sent in 1663 by Zacharias Wagenaar - the replacement for Jan van Riebeeck as Commander at the Cape - who were possibly the first white people to brave the path over the kloof.
From Cape Town to the Pass
It is worth noting, although often overlooked, that the Gantouw Pass was not the only obstacle that had to be overcome in order to leave Cape Town and head east. The Cape Flats was a notorious place for the bogging down of wagons in thick sand. As a consequence there was no ‘one road’ across the Flats, as wagon drovers tried not to follow the tracks of a previous vehicle that had broken through the thin top stable layer of sand.
Even on the lower hills, passing the present Sir Lowry’s Pass village, waggons had...
