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History: The occupation of the Hottentots Holland Valley by Willem Adriaan van der Stel halted the eastward expansion of the Colony for a time and it was only after his dismissal in 1707 that the trek over the Hottentots Holland Mountains began. The steep and dangerous Gantouw Pass went through the Hottentots Holland Kloof, just north of the present Sir Lowry’s Pass. This old pass cannot be reached from Somerset West but must be approached on foot by a zig-zag path from Steenbras
railway station through a forestry area. The old track still exists and is marked by the deep grooves worn in the rocks by the brakeshoes of a long succession of wagons, while nearby two old cannon which were mounted there to be fired to give the alarm in case of emergency, may still be seen. From there, too, the visitor enjoys an incomparable view across False Bay to the Cape Peninsula.
Like most of the passes over the “Mountains of Africa”, this pass followed the course of an old game track, called the “Gantouw” or Eland’s Pass. The Hottentots followed the tracks of the game and in due course the white settlers found their way to the interior by the same route. In January, 1669, the traveller Hieronymus Cruse led the first exploring party over these mountains, and in the 1680’s Oloff Bergh crossed this pass repeatedly to trade with the Hottentots along the Riviersonderend and to salvage the cargoes of ships that had foundered on the rocky. Agulhas coast. In 1689 Isaq Schrijver used this pass on his long journey to the Inqua on the far eastern boundary. The pass was so difficuh to negotiate that in 1707 Jan Hartog, the Dutch East India Company’s master gardener, had to have his wagons taken apart and carried to the top of the mountain with his baggage.
When the colonists began to trek over the Hottentots Holland Kloof in 1707, a negotiable route was discovered. It went from the present day village of Sir Lowry’s Pass past the farm Goedeverwachting, to the left of a spur of the mountain and then swung to the right, up the Roode Hoogte where it entered the kloof above the modern road and railway line and parallel with them. From there it went almost straight up the kloof to the nek above. Wagons travelled back and forth over the pass, but each crossing was a dangerous adventure and a severe test for man and beast. For the intrepid Lady Anne Barnard who made the crossing on her journey to Caledon in 1798, it was a bewildering experience and she was deeply shocked at the sufferings the oxen had to endure at the hands of the Hottentot drivers. The Rev. Latrobe records that on his journey to the east a span of 54 oxen barely succeeded in pulling the wagon through.
The Hottentots Holland Pass remained one of the most important impediments to the development of the Colony until 1828, when Sir Lowry Cole inspected it and instructed Major Charles Michell to rebuild it. At a cost of R6 000 Michell built a new pass, which was opened on 6th July, 1830, and named Sir Lowry’s Pass in honour of the Governor. Now, according to Michell, “this formidable and almost insurmountable stumbling block made way for a road as good as any mountain pass in Europe”, and the old Gantouw Pass fell into disuse."
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