It used to be known as the place where, having passed through the Strijdom Tunnel, you turned right at the T-junction to get to Kruger National Park's Orpen Gate, and left to Phalaborwa.
It is no longer so.
Hoedspruit and its surrounds have become a holiday destination in their own right. The area has changed dramatically from when the only place to buy something was the Hoedspruit station cafe.
I called there a few times in the old days and remember an unexpectedly beautiful woman serving from behind a counter in an impossibly small and hot dark-brick room.
You could get sugar, tea and the like there, but a favourite for locals and for rail operators and passengers passing on the way to and from Phalaborwa and its massive copper mine was the cooked chicken and, if I remember correctly, slap chips.
Now you can walk into the bottle store next to the Le Bamba general store about 50m away, and the Johnny Walker Blue Label you'd see along with other top whiskys on the shelves, and the well-stocked, low-lit wine and champagne section, would tell you this is a different place. Many people calling there these days have taste, and the money to back it, which is a good cut above the cooked-chicken level.
Next to the station cafe where the separate blanke/Europeans and nie-blanke/non-Europeans sections used to be housed in the main station building, there is now the Sleepers Railway Restaurant where, at outside tables under enormous shady trees and at daintily laid tables inside the old waiting room, à la carte meals are served to guests from all parts of the world.
Round the corner is the Puffing Billy Pub, where you hear a surprising mixture of accents from the patrons pressed together in the tight room.
I once went to watch a rugby match there and got treated to the worst rendition of Flower of Scotland you'll ever hear. They were Afrikaners, English and, I think, Germans - all of them out of tune and trying to put on Scottish accents.
The station establishments are run by Craig Williams, an affable Michaelhouse old boy who attended hotel school and says he helped set up Nando's in Britain before he came to Hoedspruit.
He says many of his guests are Britons who live in the area or come there for part of the year. It is the main reason the British pub lifestyle has taken off around Hoedspruit.
You might also meet in the Puffing Billy a local old-timer from the days when the surrounding country had not the game fences that now demarcate the fancy game estates where high-paying visitors can, from the comfort of open-side, canvas-roofed Toyota Land Cruisers, watch antelope prance about, giraffe stare back quizzically, elephant raking in mounds of vegetation, or lion lying about, waiting for the sun to set and the hunting hour to start.
They might tell of times when one lived not in lodges with extravagant Africa themes, where five-course meals decorated to look like flower arrangements are served and you get a chocolate on your pillow as a goodnight gift.
They might tell of cooking by low-burning fire so as not to attract the lion, inquisitive creatures that they are, and of the perils of night-time visits to the outside latrine.
They might also tell of how you used to - in the dark hours - hear the goods train from Phalaborwa grind to a stop and a shot or two fired, and you would know the driver had got himself a bokkie for the pot.
The town now has three shopping centres, some sections of which are in the high-beamed, thatched-roof style so widely used by game lodges to enhance the Africa atmosphere. There you see people arriving in game-drive vehicles, some wearing designer safari suits, others big hats and gaudy shirts, and invariably some wearing socks with sandals.
They visit the Pick n Pay and Spar and any of at least four bottle stores. Some you'll even see looking around one of the four hardware stores that have joined the long-serving co-op.
But mostly they'll be found browsing in the range of boutique and curio shops, or enjoying a drink and a bite at one of the restaurants or pubs, wearing expressions of "another sunny day in Africa". There are new city-type restaurants with menus and wine lists offering as good a choice as you'd find anywhere.
At dawn, when the towering cliffs of the northern Drakensberg take on pink and orange hues, hot-air balloons bearing tourists float over the treetops. As regular a sight are microlight aircraft, which disturb the precious quiet, but serve as further proof of how visitors get treated to the region's scenic beauty. Brochures at the tourist information centre tell of a good selection of lodge and other accommodation, some not quite out of reach of your ordinary rand earner.
For instance, Tshukudu Bush Camp, a short distance out of town, has affordable prices for cottages with private bathrooms and self-catering facilities, and guests are promised close encounters with rehabilitated animals and sight of the big five on game drives.
River Lodge on the Olifants River sounds a classy outfit.
The Otters Den River Lodge directs itself at the more adventurous types.
Set on an island in the Blyde River, it offers white-water rafting, birding and botanical excursions, walking safaris and the like.
The area has many places of interest. Kruger Park is a short drive away for day visits.
Down the road from the town is the well-known Kapama Reserve with its Endangered Species Centre and Cheetah Breeding Project, and its Camp Jabulani that offers elephant rides. Further away is the spectacular Blyde River Canyon.
On the way there is the Bombyx Mori Silk factory and shop, where fine fabrics and lotions are on offer. Nearby is the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, where you want to cry for what humans do to animals and shout for joy at seeing what others do to heal them. Further away is the Mafunyani Shangaan Tribal Village, which offers insight into the soul of an older tribal existence.
But it is the British-type pub culture that has in its own way perhaps come to mark best the region's shift from a rural outpost to a tourist destination.
The hostelries come in various shapes and sizes, each with its own character.
Inibos on the bank of the Blyde River is a thatched-roof timber structure with boardwalks where, sitting under a stuffed crocodile draped across the overhead wood panel at the bar, you can watch the river flow by on its way to joining the Olifants River.
A little further along the road you pass the biggest pot plant in the world. In whoever's wisdom, it has been decided to put not a picket fence but a high wall round the massive baobab to protect it from the graffiti mob. It has effectively put paid to its status as a tourist attraction.
But on to the hostelries. On the tar road to Klaserie, there is a dirt turn-off that takes you to Ambri Africa, a bush pub housed in what used to be a slaughterhouse for game and cattle. It is run by Mike Ambrosini and his wife, Helena, who prepare homely dishes such as curry and rice and oxtail.
Further on, at the village of Kampersrus at the foot of towering Mariepskop, is Wildebees Lapa, renowned for serving the best boerekos in the district. Run by Janetta Viljoen and her close associates, Kelvin and Relies Nyathi, its buffet table offers soup and home-made white and brown nutty bread, at least four salads, and rice, samp, beans and sweet potato or carrots to go with the main dish of venison or chicken pie, curried offal, oxtail, bobotie and yellow rice, and such. Plus three types of dessert all for less than R100.
Taking the Timbavati turn- off between Klaserie and Hoedspruit, you pass the area's increasingly busy Eastgate Airport on the road to JosMacs. From two terrace levels set on a river bank, guests can watch lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo and even leopard come to drink at a watering hole across a safety fence.
The owner is Winston Wiggill, a son of the area who bought back the old family farm after making good in business in Joburg.
Wiggill named his pub after Jos Macdonald, his grandfather, who was sent to South Africa on remittance because of his untoward behaviour back in Scotland. He was the champion bare-fist fighter in Pilgrim's Rest before he acquired the farm in the Lowveld in 1934.
"Naming my pub after him seemed a good way of honouring a man who is so well remembered," says Wiggill with a smile.