References to Kota Gelanggi were reported in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by colonial scholar-administrators including Dudley Francis Amelius Hervey (1849–1911), who published eye witness reports of the city in 1881 and Sir Richard Olof Winstedt (1878–1966), who stated that an Orang Asli (indigenous group) was prepared to take people to the site in the late 1920s. The ancient city was also known to the adventurer-explorer Gerald Gardner (1884–1964), who discovered the ruins of Johore Lama while searching for Kota Gelanggi.