The station at Fourteen Streams is said to derive its name from the fact that the KiGariep (Vaal) divides at this point into a number of smaller channels. The railway line from Kimberley reached Fourteen Streams on 1 December1890. Although this work had originally been commissioned by the Cape Government,powers of construction were transferred to the British South Africa Company,who undertook to build the line from Kimberley to Fourteen Streams, and thereafter to Vryburg, in British Bechuanaland.Eventually the railway stretched through Mafeking and the Bechuanaland Protectorate to Bulawayo and Salisbury in Rhodesia.

On 16 October 1899 a local force of 270 men under Police Inspector Snow withdrew from Fourteen Streams to Kimberley, and the following day a Boer force under field-cornet Bosman marched into the village. Following skirmishes at the Fourteen Streams bridge on 28 March 1900, the village was returned to the Cape on 6 May1900 when Boer troops under Gen SP du Toit retreated before a British force led by Maj-Gen Sir Archibald Hunter.

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