Laid out in 1882 on the farms Het Bad, Noodshulp, Roodepoort and Turfbult. The town was proclaimed as Hartingsburg, but renamed Warmbad in 1920, Afrikaans for ‘hot bath‘ The Tswana tribe who lived in the region called the spring “Bela Bela” (‘he who boils on his own?.
The highly mineralised hot spring (62° C) was well known to local tribes and herds of gam.e animals long before the first white settlers moved into the area. President Burgers himself visited Het Bad in 1873 and it was at his recommendation that the farm was bought by the government and developed into a health and holiday resort. The water, which flows out of the ground at about 23 000 liters an hour, is rich in sodium chloride, calcium carbonate and other minerals. It is also mildly radioactive. An estimated 2 million people visit Belabela (Warmbaths) and its surrounding holiday resorts annually.
Location: 110 km from Pretoria
Educational Facilities: 2 pre–primary schools; 1 primary sch. & 1 high school Hospitals: 1 provincial, 1 Private.
Main Places of Interest: mineral spring and facilities, Voortrekker cemetery; British Blockhouse; Belabela (Warmbaths) Dam; various nature resorts and holiday resorts in the vicinity.
Joint Administration: Bela Bela.
Blockhouse
Near the railway station there is a blockhouse, built by the British authorities during the Anglo• Boer War to protect the railway from destruction by the Boers. It formed a part of a formidable line of blockhouses that extended from Noupoort right across the Orange Free State and through Johannesburg and Pretoria to Polokwane (Pietersburg).
Mabula Game Lodge
Lies at the foot of the Waterberg Mountains in 8 000 hectares of unspoilt bushveld, with the ‘Big 5’, a variety of antelope and other wildlife, such as zebra, giraffe, hippo and nearly 300 species of birds.
Buyskop
6Km north of the town is the famed Buyskop (1 308m), named after the notorious outlaw Coenraad de Buys, from where much of the stone used in the construction of the Union Building was quarried. Ruins of buildings dating from Coenraad de Buys can be viewed.
Groot Nylsoog
9Km from Belabela (Warmbaths) you pass a road on your left leading to Groot Nylsoog – the source of a river that early Voortrekkers believed to be the Nile.
