The Piketberg Mountain Range is a mountain range located in the

Swartland The Swartland is a region of Western Cape Province that begins some north of Cape Town and consists of the area between the towns of Malmesbury, South Africa, Malmesbury in the south, Darling, Western Cape, Darling in the west, Piketberg in the ...

(Black land) region of the

Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. The mountain range is made up of low mountains primarily composed of

Table Mountain Sandstone Table Mountain Sandstone (TMS), formally known by its geological name the Peninsula Formation Sandstone, is a group of rock formations within the Cape Supergroup sequence. While the term "Table Mountain Sandstone" remains widely used, it is n ...

. It is a mountain range, which stands alone, an island bordered by only three towns –

Aurora An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

to the West, Redelinghuys to the North and

Piketberg Piketberg (also sometimes spelt Piquetberg in the past) is a town in the Western Cape, South Africa, located about 80 km east of Saldanha Bay. The original spelling of the name was "Piquetberg". The town is in the foothills of the Piketberg mount ...

on its Eastern slopes. It is accessed by the Versfeld Pass.

Etymology

The name originates from the old Dutch word 'picquet' as a small military outpost or 'pickets' were posted here in the 1670s to protect the farmers from cattle rustling raids by the Kogikwa

Khoikhoi Khoikhoi (Help:IPA/English, /ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''KOY-koy'') (or Khoekhoe in Namibian orthography) are the traditionally Nomad, nomadic pastoralist Indigenous peoples, indigenous population of South Africa. They ...

led by Gonnema. Another possible source of Piketberg's name could be related to the French card game

piquet Piquet (; ) is an early 16th-century plain-trick card game for two players that became France's national game. David Parlett calls it a "classic game of relatively great antiquity... still one of the most skill-rewarding card games for two" but ...

. According to

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

, a French refugee (or

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...

) who lived on the side of the mountain often played rounds of Piquet with his wife. One day a French official tasked with the recording of the names of farms and their inhabitants visited them (he had apparently visited them a few times before, and each time they had been playing the game). After remarking that whenever he visited they were always playing piquet, he asked them what the name of their farm was. The Frenchman, who was supposedly Jaques Mouton, replied: "Eh bien, monsieur, écrivez Mont de Piquet" (Well then sir, let's write Piketberg.)

References

{{reflist Mountain ranges of the Western Cape