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IN THE NAMIB desert in southern Namibia lies a ghost town known as Kolmanskop.The town was once home to approximately 1,000 miners and their children, but today only tourists with the proper permits may enter the perimeter of the “Sperrgebiet” or “Prohibited Area.”
The story goes that in 1908, a worker named Zacharias Lewala found a shiny stone and showed it to his supervisor, August Stauch. Stauch saw the rock, and realized the area was rich in diamonds. The news spread quickly, sparking the migration of German miners and fortune-seekers to the area.
The diamond field was called “Sperrgebiet” by the German government, and the miners began to settle down and build the town with their families. Homes and establishments were erected in the German-style, and Kolmanskop became prosperous due to the enormous wealth of those first miners.
The town had a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, swimming pool, casino, and even a bowling alley, and it was also the first in the South African region to own an x-ray machine.
But by the end of the first World War, the diamond field was near-exhaustion. And by 1954, Kolmanskop was completely abandoned. The remaining homes today are slowly filling with sand and only visited by tourist groups who come to see the ghost town.
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It does make you wonder, if the sand has taken back that much in nearly sixty years, how much from the Egyptian era is lost under the Sahara.
Surely the Kolmanskop of the Namib Desert is a well known haunt of your readers ,and this will not come as news to them.
Some ghost estate…….
Amazeballs!
That’s Longford.
Leithrim a close second
I was in Namibia this year such an amazing country. So many natural wonders there. Oldest plants. 2nd biggest canyons in the world, 2nd biggest Sand Dune in the world, linked to Victoria Falls and many more. Ethosa Safari Park was the best experience of my life.
This was on that BBC Science show with professor Brian Cox…. Interesting show!
The pictures are good, but to walk around it is really strange. It’s like they planned to return there was so much stuff left.
It’s a proven fact that deserts are living things and constantly moving and growing. Interesting stuff. Put into similar context, look at all the manors and castles in Ireland that have been taken back by Mother Nature over the centuries.
Amazeballs
Amazeballs
Balls of amazement.
Amazeballs
If they had only kept the doors closed……
Place looks fairly bate..
You’d look worse if you we’re left out in the desert for 60 years!!!
Wud be well exfoliated tho..:)
Amazeballs
Longford and Leitrim in 5 years!
dump
Namibia’s well worth a holiday. I didn’t make it to the ghost town, but Swakopmund, right on the coast, is beside some of the most breathtaking parts of the Namib Desert. Some of the world’s best oysters in those parts, too! Namibia is a weird country, due to their history of German colonialism, but it’s nevertheless rich in indigenous cultural diversity. Many would say the country benefited from it, others not. Thanks for the photos. They make me want to go back!
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