The Revival Era
1980s–present · A return to the mountain.
By the early 1980s Kaapsehoop had nearly been abandoned. Then, slowly, people began to return — a forty-year reoccupation carried by a handful of families who chose to keep the mountain alive.
By the early 1980s, Kaapsehoop had endured decades of quiet isolation. The industrial era was over; the Mining Commissioner’s office had long closed; the asbestos works were winding down; and the township-establishment file begun in 1978 would not close until 1989. The village had a tiny permanent population and a faded administrative presence. And then the mountain did not stay quiet — from the early 1980s onwards, people began to return.
Re-engaging the mountain — early 1980s
In the absence of formal settlement or governance, the mountain re-entered public awareness through informal recreation. Hang-gliders launched from the escarpment, riding the strong uplift over the De Kaap Valley — among them Helgie Braithwait, remembered as a true legend of the sky. Enthusiasts flew radio-controlled gliders from the cliff edges, and a short-lived motocross track ran on the village outskirts. None of it was residential; but together these activities signalled something the village had not seen for decades — renewed human engagement with its terrain.
The first return — 1985
In 1985, Shane and Marion Latré moved to Kaapsehoop. Shane built his home with his own hands, and his return brought one of the founding bloodlines back to the mountain — he was a descendant of Charles Rupert Lambourn, the 1886 prospector. At a moment when the village’s future was far from certain, he owned sixteen stands. His decision to settle permanently marked a quiet but symbolic turning point. Shane passed away in February 1988, three years after his return — but those three years helped re-establish Kaapsehoop as a place to live in, not merely a place to remember.
The eighteen residents — late 1980s
When Richard “Dick” Latré, Shane’s father, arrived, Kaapsehoop’s permanent population had dwindled to just eighteen residents — sixteen adults and two children. There was no formal governing body and very limited services; the village functioned through cooperation, trust and shared responsibility.
Eighteen people. Sixteen adults. Two children.Kaapsehoop’s permanent population, late 1980s
Custodians of memory and place
Among the most relied-upon figures of the revival were Dick and Laurette Latré. Laurette was a descendant of the founding generation — the Lambourn, Nel and Topham lines all met in her marriage to Dick, who became widely regarded as Kaapsehoop’s unofficial mayor. He helped protect the village’s historic land and water rights, cared for hiking huts and trails, and helped secure the fencing of the historic cemetery that has received the village’s dead since the 1880s (its oldest headstone dated 1886) and remains in use to this day. The family also preserved much of the village’s twentieth-century photographic memory — images that still hang in homes, businesses and displays around Kaapsehoop today.
Great-granddaughter of Charles Rupert Lambourn; wife of Kaapsehoop’s unofficial mayor; mother of five. She made her home on the mountain from 1989 to 2007, through the heart of the revival years. With her death, one of the last direct links between Kaapsehoop’s nineteenth-century founding and its present-day community was lost. Her memory will live in the village she helped keep alive.
Continuity across the generations
A defining feature of the revival was the continued presence of descendants of the founding families — the Lambourn, Nel and Topham lines, alongside others with deep roots on the mountain. Of particular importance to the village’s record was Ivy Frances Nel, who served as Kaapsehoop’s mayoress and kept an extended rainfall journal over decades — one of the principal informants through whom the village’s twentieth-century memory was passed down. The revival was sustained by a very small group who kept homes occupied and community alive when the village remained fragile and largely overlooked.
The 1991 auction and community response
As interest slowly grew, new pressures emerged. In the early 1990s large portions of former state land were offered at auction, raising concern about the future of public spaces, historic squares and access routes. In response, local owners organised to protect the town’s character, forming the Kaapsche Hoop Homeowners Association and a first Land Owners Committee. The 1991 events marked the transition from informal custodianship to organised community governance.
Access, tourism and the wild horses — mid-1990s
The completion of the tar road in the mid-1990s fundamentally changed Kaapsehoop’s relationship with the outside world, bringing visitors, tourism interest and gradual economic activity. In these years the wild horses of the escarpment became emblematic of the village, shaping its public identity. Long-term residents worked to balance access with preservation.
A living legacy
Kaapsehoop’s revival was not the work of a single initiative but the sustained commitment of individuals who chose to live on, care for and protect the mountain when it offered little certainty. The hang-gliders opened the door; the Latrés brought a founding bloodline back and carried the stewardship forward; the 1991 organising formalised it; the tar road connected it; the wild horses came to embody it. Today the Nel Cottage — once the home of Johannes Marthinus and Daisy Nel — operates as the Uitspan Museum & Coffee House, and the Lambourn-Nel presence that began on 3 September 1886 has continued at the village for one hundred and forty years. The mountain continues.
Sources: the existing kaapsehoop.net Revival Era record, direct family memory recorded in May 2026, and the community-history record of the 1980s–present period. Fuller biographical material on the revival-era figures, and the 1991 auction documentation, is preserved in the Kaapsehoop Heritage Archive and the People of Kaapsehoop archive.