small town in South Africa
Vredefort is a small farming town in the northern part of Free State. It is an agricultural town where cattle, peanuts, sorghum, sunflowers and maize are farmed. It is home to 3,000 residents. The nearby Vredefort Dome is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The town was established in 1876 on a farm called Visgat, on the Vredefort crater, the largest and oldest visible bolide impact crater in the world (with a diameter of 300 km (190 mi)). It was this approximately 10-km (6.2 mi) wide bolide that led to the preservation of the gold-bearing reefs of the Free State some 2 billion years ago. The town's name, which translates to "peace fort" in Afrikaans and Dutch, was derived from the peaceful conclusion to a threatened war between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The British built a concentration camp here during the Second Boer War to house Boer women and children.
The Vredefort Dome (Crater) is the largest and one of the oldest known meteor impact sites in the world. It is South Africa's seventh World Heritage Site.
In 2019, scientists from the University of the Free State discovered 8,000-year-old carvings made by the Khoisan people. The carvings depicted a hippopotamus, horse, and antelope in the "Rain Snake" Dyke, which may have spiritual significance regarding the rain-making mythology of the Khoisan.
From the N1 take the R59 through Parys.