The first village
In the area of ​​present-day Livingstone, Mukuni was the largest village before Livingstone was founded. Mukuni’s location 10 kilometers southeast of Livingstone was populated by local tribes originally from Zimbabwe. In the 18th century, people from the Congo conquered the area under the leadership of Chief Mukuni, whom the village was named after.

Livingstone and the arrival of Europeans
First Europeans in the area were Scottish David Livingstone, who came to Victoria Falls in 1855. He saw the waterfalls of present-day Livingstone Island, which, during the rainy season, lies almost in the midst of the rushing cascades of Victoria Falls.

With Livingstone, Europeans entered this part of southern Africa. It really took off with Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, which in the 1890s established a British government north of Zambezi and thereby in present Zambia. Before that, colonization had taken place from the south, and with it the establishment of southern Rhodesia.

The British started extracting minerals and a timber industry that used the Old Drift settlement at Zambezi above Victoria Falls as a crossing point across the river. Due to the many canyons on Zambezi’s run, this was the most suitable transport site for several hundred kilometers and the transport was rapidly developing as the extraction took place.

Old Drift and Livingstone Founded
With the crossings over Zambezi, activity at Old Drift in present-day Zambia grew, eventually becoming the first town in the country to be established in 1897. However, Old Drift’s location was plagued by mosquitoes and accompanying malaria, and so after a few years, Europeans moved to the higher-lying areas of present-day Livingstone, which became the center for the British in the region.

The railway and Victoria Falls’ wax works
The Rhodesian Railways railway company had reached Bulawayo in southern Rhodesia in the mid-1890s, and the course was a lever for an industrial development that included the coal mines at Hwange, located just 100 kilometers from Victoria Falls.

Rhodesian Railways built a runway for Hwange, but Cecil Rhodes’ vision of a runway through British colonies from Cape Town to Cairo also had to be pursued. Therefore, the track was extended to Victoria Falls, which it reached in the form of the present city of Victoria Falls in 1904.

Victoria Falls as a settlement had been constructed in 1901 in connection with studies of the potential of the waterfalls as a hydropower supplier, and with the speedy arrival of the railroad it brought the real city with it. One of the prominent buildings was the prestigious Victoria Falls Hotel, which opened in 1904 as the railway.

Crossing Zambezi
It was crucial for both the railway and the development of the areas that a connection could be established across Zambezi. To this end, Cecil Rhodes initiated the construction of the Victoria Falls Bridge, which Rhodes said was to be constructed so that passengers could see the waterfalls themselves.

However, the railway development did not end with the bridge, as Rhodes started construction of a railway between Livingstone and Kalomo as early as 1904, and it was commissioned before the opening of the Victoria Falls Bridge in September 1905.

New capital
With the opening of the Victoria Falls Bridge and the new railway line, Livingstone boomed, and in 1907 the British made the city the capital of the combined North Rhodesia and Northeast Rhodesia.

The new status of capital in itself brought new growth. Various institutions were established here and with them new buildings, some of which continue to be seen in the street scene. The resource-rich area also brought prosperity to Livingstone as a trading town, while the city of Victoria Falls in Southern Rhodesia developed tourism with its location immediately by the waterfalls of the same name. Livingstone was also a supplier to large parts of the tourism industry in Victoria Falls, so it also brought increased growth in the colony capital.

Boomtowns and new status
During the first decades of the 20th century, both Livingstone and Victoria Falls experienced a solid period of growth, which was the foundation of today’s urban community, which has, however, continued to evolve; not least thanks to the tourist streams to the waterfalls.

However, some administrative function was moved when the more centrally located Lusaka became the new capital in 1935; it happened to get closer to the economically and resource-important area of ​​Copperbelt against the Congo.

Victoria Falls and Livingstone Today
Zambia’s independence in the 1960s brought new times to Livingstone and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Up until and at the beginning of independence, many whites chose to move from North Rhodesia / Zambia to South Rhodesia and South Africa, among others. With them, part of Livingstone’s financial foundation disappeared. The importance of the closure of the border between Zambia and southern Rhodesia during the 1970s was marked by a lack of trade and tourism in Livingstone and, to a lesser extent, Victoria Falls.

After Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, boundary conditions were normalized over time, and over the past decades large sums of money have been invested in the rapidly growing tourism industry for the waterfalls, benefiting both Victoria Falls and Livingstone. Thus, today’s cities are endowed with many good hotels and countless visitor opportunities.

The area, as in the early days of the city, also locates at the location as a transit point for people and goods across Zambezi. The railway over the Victoria Falls Bridge is still an important traffic vein, with increased trade coming from the river crossings to Botswana and Namibia along the road west of Livingstone.