Denver is an industrial suburb in eastern

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

, on the railway to

Germiston Germiston, also known as kwaDukathole, is a small city in the East Rand region of Gauteng, South Africa, administratively forming part of the City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality since the latter's establishment in 2000. It functions a ...

and Hoofrif Road, around 6 km east of City Hall. It borders Benrose to the west,

Jeppestown Jeppestown is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is located in Region F of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. History Jeppestown was established in or after 1886 by , who formed the Ford and Jeppe Estate Company with hi ...

and Malvern to the north,

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

to the east, and the François Oberholzer Freeway to the south. Just a small portion of the suburb in the northwest has residential zoning; otherwise, Denver consists of industrial land and squatter camps both in the west and up north, the latter largely on Hoofrif Road. Denver was laid out on 25 ha of

Doornfontein Doornfontein is an inner-city suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, located to the east of the city centre, Region 8. History The area, whose name means "thorn fountain", was originally the southern part of a farm owned by Frederick Jacobus Bez ...

farm, like all the eastern suburbs of Johannesburg. Owner F.J. Bezuidenhout, for whom

Bezuidenhout Valley Bezuidenhout Valley is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. The area lies to the east of the Johannesburg CBD and is surrounded by the suburbs of Kensington to the south and Observatory to the north. It is located in Region E of the City of Jo ...

is named, leased the area in 1903 to a J.H. Strutton to grow crops and garden. Denver was later purchased by a business, and in October 1898, it was zoned as a residential township. Before and after the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South ...

, several American

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

machinery firms built offices there, and it was named after

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

, capital of

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

, as a result. On May 31, 1900, Dr. Fritz Krause, the

South African Republic The South African Republic ( nl, Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, abbreviated ZAR; af, Suid-Afrikaanse Republiek), also known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer Republic in Southern Africa which existed from 1852 to 1902, when it ...

's appointed mayor of Johannesburg, rode out to meet

Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, (30 September 1832 – 14 November 1914) was a British Victorian era general who became one of the most successful British military commanders of his time. Born in India to an Anglo-Iri ...

to arrange the surrender of the main city into which they subsequently rode. In the early years, the white population of the area was so large that from 1910 to 1933, there was a constituency in the Parliament of South Africa located in the neighborhood..

Railway station

The Denver Station stop on the

Metrorail Gauteng Metrorail Gauteng is a network of commuter rail services in Gauteng province in South Africa, serving the Johannesburg and Pretoria metro areas. It is operated by Metrorail, a division of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). Metrora ...

is located at . It was the site of a

train crash A train wreck, train collision, train accident or train crash is a type of disaster involving one or more trains. Train wrecks often occur as a result of miscommunication, as when a moving train meets another train on the same track; or an acci ...

in 2015.

Sources

* Potgieter, D.J. (ed.) (1971). ''

Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa The ''Standard Encyclopædia of Southern Africa'' (''SESA'') is a 12-volume encyclopaedia that is principally about the Republic of South Africa and nearby countries. About 1400 people contributed to the encyclopaedia. The first two volumes wer ...

'', vol. 3. Cape Town: Nasionale Opvoedkundige Uitgewery (Nasou).

References

{{Greater Johannesburg, communities Suburbs of Johannesburg Johannesburg Region F