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Did You Know?

The Seinflag stasie (flag signal station) on the roof of the Garfield Hotel in Jacobsdal, Free State, dates to 1899, the year the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) began. During the war, both Boer and British forces used visual signalling systems, including flag signals (often semaphore or heliograph), to relay messages across the veld, especially where telegraph lines were cut or unreliable. Jacobsdal, a small town on the Riet River, was strategically located near the western front of the war, and such a station would have been used to observe enemy movements or communicate with nearby commandos or garrisons. The Garfield Hotel itself was a prominent building in the town, making its roof a suitable vantage point for long-distance flag signalling. However, specific operational records of this particular station are scarce, and much of the detail about its daily use has not survived in public archives. Contextually, Jacobsdal was occupied by British forces in early 1900, and the town saw significant military activity, including the nearby Battle of Paardeberg (February 1900), which was fought roughly 30 kilometres to the north-east. Flag signalling stations in this era typically operated during daylight hours, using coloured flags or a heliograph (mirror flashing sunlight) to send coded messages across open terrain. The presence of such a station on a hotel roof indicates the importance of line-of-sight communication in the pre-radio era, but no verified records confirm the exact messages sent or the duration of its operation. Today, the Garfield Hotel building is a local landmark, though the flag station itself is no longer extant.

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