Hofmeyr is a small Karoo town situated about 20 km west of the Bamboesberg mountain range in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
The town lies 64 km north-east of Nxuba (formerly known as Cradock) at an altitude of 1,252 metres. In former times, the town of Hofmeyr lay at the centre of a flourishing sheep-farming district and managed some salt pans 10 km to its west.
Founded in 1873, the town was initially named Maraisburg. To avoid confusion with the Gauteng area of Maraisburg it was renamed Hofmeyr in 1911 in honour of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr (Onze Jan), a campaigner for the equal treatment of Afrikaans and English and a prominent figure in the Eerste Taalbeweging.
The Hofmeyr Skull, belonging to a 36,000 year old anatomically modern human, was found in 1952 in the dry wash of the Vlekpoort River just outside Hofmeyr.
