During 2024 I found myself with six months off work to do as I please and we decided to go on a pretty epic road trip around Namibia. One of our stops was to visit the fairly well known Ghost town of Kolmanskop as it is somewhere i've wanted to see for years. Yeah, it's permission and you pay for $20 for two tickets, but if you book the sunrise tickets you get run of the place for a few hours before the tour buses descend. You also beat the desert heat, so its worth it if you are passing. Things are a pretty touristy now as they have cleaned out a few buildings, opened a cafe and loosely restricted access to a few parts. Until the morning tourists arrived (it was a holiday weekend), we didn't bump into anyone else.
I won't like, I went for the photos rather than the 'explore'
History (shamelessly stolen from Wiki):
In 1908, in what was then German South-West Africa, a railroad worker Zacharias Lewala found a diamond while working in this area and showed it to his supervisor, the German railway inspector August Stauch. Realizing the area was rich in diamonds, German miners settled, and soon after the German Empire declared a large area as a "Sperrgebiet", starting to exploit the diamond field. Driven by the enormous wealth of the first diamond miners, the residents built the village in the architectural style of a German town, with amenities and institutions including a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theatre and sport-hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray-station in the southern hemisphere, as well as the first tram in Africa.
The town started to decline during World War I when the diamond field slowly started to deplete. By the early 1920s, the area was in a severe decline. Hastening the town's demise was the discovery in 1928 of the richest diamond-bearing deposits ever known, on the beach terraces 270 kilometres (170 mi) south of Kolmanskop, near the Orange River. Many of the town's inhabitants joined the rush to the south, leaving their homes and possessions behind. The new diamond find merely required scouting the beaches as opposed to more difficult mining. The town was ultimately abandoned in 1956.
Pics:
I won't like, I went for the photos rather than the 'explore'
History (shamelessly stolen from Wiki):
In 1908, in what was then German South-West Africa, a railroad worker Zacharias Lewala found a diamond while working in this area and showed it to his supervisor, the German railway inspector August Stauch. Realizing the area was rich in diamonds, German miners settled, and soon after the German Empire declared a large area as a "Sperrgebiet", starting to exploit the diamond field. Driven by the enormous wealth of the first diamond miners, the residents built the village in the architectural style of a German town, with amenities and institutions including a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theatre and sport-hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray-station in the southern hemisphere, as well as the first tram in Africa.
The town started to decline during World War I when the diamond field slowly started to deplete. By the early 1920s, the area was in a severe decline. Hastening the town's demise was the discovery in 1928 of the richest diamond-bearing deposits ever known, on the beach terraces 270 kilometres (170 mi) south of Kolmanskop, near the Orange River. Many of the town's inhabitants joined the rush to the south, leaving their homes and possessions behind. The new diamond find merely required scouting the beaches as opposed to more difficult mining. The town was ultimately abandoned in 1956.
Pics:
