1898 — Kruger National Park Is Born

On March 26, 1898, Paul Kruger signed the proclamation creating the Sabie Game Reserve between the Crocodile and Sabie rivers, one of Africa's first protected areas. It was born to stop rampant hunting and save wildlife thinned by poachers and a rinderpest epidemic that had swept through the herds.

The reserve grew under the fierce warden James Stevenson-Hamilton, nicknamed Skukuza. In 1926 the reserve merged into Kruger National Park, now nearly twenty thousand square kilometers of savanna and home to the Big Five. A proclamation signed to save vanishing game became one of the world's great sanctuaries for wild Africa.