The dam wall stands astride the Crocodile River gorge, and was completed in 1923.  The dam wall is described as the main historic driving force behind the development of the Magaliesberg region.  The dam was built on the farm Hartebeestpoort, once owned by the Boer General Hendrik Schoeman (1840 - 1901).

The farm and adjacent land was acquired by the State, mainly through the facilitation of his son, Johan Schoeman (1887 - 1967), in about 1912. The dam was completed in 1923, and only in 1925 did water flow over the wall for the first time. 
The dam wall is 149.5 metres long and is built across a gorge cutting through the Magaliesberg. The reservoir is fed by the waters of the Crocodile River and Magalies River  and covers approximately 19 square kilometres , with a mean depth of 9.6 metres and maximum depth of 45.1 metres.

A tarmac road skirts the water's edge on the north side; along its route it passes through a 56.6 m long tunnel and also crosses the dam.

The cultural heritage of the region is primarily associated with human interventions and creations from earliest times until the recent past. These heritage resources are non-renewable and therefore vulnerable to environmental and social pressures. The heritage register includes sites of historical, geological, archaeological and artistic interest. Some of the sites date back to the Iron Age era, while some represent the history of the Voortrekkers. There are also a number of sites dating back to the Anglo Boer war, and the time when the dam was built by poor-white labourers in the early 1920s.