Ferreirasdorp is an inner-city suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa located in Region F.First known as Ferreira's Camp and later Ferreira's Township, it is the oldest part of Johannesburg. Sometimes referred to as the "cradle of Johannesburg", it is where the first gold diggings started, and where the first diggers initially settled. The city grew around the mining camp in the Ferreirasdorp area, and Johannesburg’s Main Street developed from a rough track where the present Albert Street led off towards Ferreira’s Camp.The suburb is named after Colonel Ignatius Ferreira, leader of the original group of diggers who settled in this area in 1886.HistoryThe suburb's origins lie in the Turffontein farm set up by Colonel Ignatius Ferreira, a Boer adventurer from Cape Colony. Ferreira had acquired a dozen claims in the vicinity and opened the reef in a cutting. The ore from both sides had a high gold content. The first tent on the site was erected in 1886, two months before gold digging started in earnest.In 1886 Hans Sauer, who combined a medical practice with prospecting on Cecil Rhodes’s behalf, was guided from Ferreira’s Camp to the main group of gold reefs by a son of the widow Petronella Oosthuizen, the owner of a farm at Langlaagte, on which the main gold reefs had first been discovered.Following reports of new gold finds in the Witwatersrand, Rhodes and Rudd set off for Ferreira's camp. Already at the time of Rhodes' visit, a little crowd of diggers were at work, and in the week that had passed since Sauer had been away, an Englishwoman had run up a reed and mud building called Walker's Hotel.
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