Originally, Boksburg was laid out in 1887 to serve the surrounding gold mines, and named after the State Secretary of the South African Republic, Eduard Bok. The Main Reef Road linked Boksburg to all the other major mining towns on the Witwatersrand and the Angelo Hotel was used as a production post. A railway was built to link Boksburg to Johannesburg in 1890.
Boksburg lake made world news in 1989 when the newly elected Conservative Party municipality decided to fence off the lake and prohibit non-whites from using the facility.

Segregation policies were taken to such an extreme that when council granted transfer of lease of the Golden Lake Restaurant on the lake premises from S.Y Ho to another Chinese woman, S.Y Yip, it was with the provision that the new lease barred nonwhites-including Chinese, from dining there.[2] Controversy surrounding the safety of the lake was created when Councellor Stephanie Greyling made the following statement: “the lake is now safe…Boksburg Lake was like a second Chicago with more than a 100 murders in 18 months…”
However official figures were given as 27, and this included the number of people who died in the neighbouring Boksburg Benoni Hospital. Statistics released by the offices of the Minister of Law and Order listed only two murders at Boksburg Lake from November 1986 until November 1988”

As a result of the council’s policies, blacks boycotted the CBD, and commercial sales dropped 40% to 70%.[5] Also, The Lake became the focal point on the East Rand for violent racial clashes between Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) supporters and African National Congress (ANC) supporting Coloureds and Blacks from the neighbouring townships. The decision to re-introduce segregation at the facilities sparked off a local and international uproar, with local Coloured and Black residents initiating a yearlong boycott of shops in the CBD.