Ecca Pass, is situated in the Eastern Cape province of

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

, on the regional road R67, between

Grahamstown Makhanda, also known as Grahamstown, is a town of about 140,000 people in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated about northeast of Port Elizabeth and southwest of East London. Makhanda is the largest town in the Makana Loc ...

and

Fort Beaufort Fort Beaufort ( Xhosa: iBhofolo) is a town in the Amatole District of South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, and had a population of 25,668 in 2011. The town was established in 1837 and became a municipality in 1883. The town lies at the conflue ...

. It was the first pass built by

Andrew Geddes Bain Andrew Geddes Bain (baptised 11 June 1797 – 20 October 1864), was a South African geologist, road engineer, palaeontologist and explorer. Life history The only child of Alexander Bain and Jean Geddes, both of whom died when Bain was still a ...

as part of the Queen's Road. Bain named the heights and the pass after the Ecca River, a Fish River tributary, which is believed to mean "salty" or "brackish" in the local Khoikhoi language. Due to Bain's geological investigations here, the

Ecca Group The Ecca Group is the second of the main subdivisions of the Karoo Supergroup of geological strata in southern Africa. It mainly follows conformably after the Dwyka Group in some sections, but in some localities overlying unconformably over much ...

was named after the 225- to 270-million-year-old sedimentary blue shales and mudstones at the foot of the pass. Bain is honored by a monument at the summit of the pass.Located at

References

Mountain passes of the Eastern Cape {{EasternCape-geo-stub