Vaal River Town in Northern Cape
Warrenton is a small town situated in the Northern Cape, around 70 km from Kimberley, on the banks of the Vaal River.
Warrenton is known as an agricultural centre due to its proximity to the Vaal River.
The town grew around an irrigation system that was set up by a group who wanted to farm vegetables to export to the surrounding diamond mines in the late 1800’s. The town is named after Sir Charles Warren, who was appointed in 1877 to oversee the allocation of mineral rights and land in Griqualand West.
The discovery of diamonds in Warrenton on common grazing land attracted another diamond rush (the first being in 1888) and thus mining continued until 1926.
Warrenton is the main commercial centre of the Vaal-Harts irrigation scheme, which covers 36 950 ha and is one of the largest of its kind in the world. The scheme consists of a diversion weir on the Vaal River, from where water is fed into a 180-km-long canal system to water the fertile valley of the Harts River.
A variety of agricultural crops such as wheat, maize, groundnuts, lucerne and cotton are grown under irrigation in the valley.