Obviously the Kruger National Park is the main attraction for the guests of Dreamfields Guesthouse. A good reason to find out a few facts about the history of the finest Game Parks in the World:The Park was first proclaimed in 1898 as the Sabie Game Reserve by the then president of the Transvaal Republic, Paul Kruger, to protect the wildlife of the South African Lowveld. He first proposed the need to protect the animals of the Lowveld in 1884, but his revolutionary vision took another 12 years to be realised when the area between the Sabie and Crocodile Rivers was set aside for restricted hunting. This area remains at the core of today's Kruger National Park.
After the Anglo-Boer war Scottish born James Stevenson-Hamilton was appointed the park’s first warden on 1 July 1902. In 1903, Stevenson-Hamilton oversaw an extension of the Sabi Reserve twenty kilometres or so back towards the Drakensberg Escarpment. He was also put in charge of a new Reserve established that year, the Shingwedzi, comprising an additional half a million hectares of land to the north of the Sabie. On 31 May 1926 the National Parks Act was proclaimed and with it the merging of the Sabie and Shingwedzi Game Reserves into the Kruger National Park.
In 1927 three cars entered the Park. Two years later there were 850 cars visiting. Over the next 50 years some 150 000 people visited the Kruger National Park annually. Today there are 700 000 wildlife enthusiasts who visit the Park every year!
Picture and more information: Kruger2canyons.com
