Kolmanskop: The Diamond Town the Namib Desert Is Swallowing

In April 1908, in what was then the German colony of South West Africa, a railway worker named Zacharias Lewala was working on the line near Lüderitz when he picked up a shiny stone. Lewala had worked in the diamond mines of Kimberley before, and he brought the stone to his supervisor, the German railway inspector August Stauch. Stauch reportedly tested it by scratching the glass of his watch. It was a diamond. Stauch and his partner, the mining engineer Söhnke Nissen, quietly quit their jobs and staked claims to about 75 square kilometers of desert. Word got out anyway, and a diamond rush followed. That same year, the colonial government declared the southern coastal strip a restricted diamond area, the Sperrgebiet, which is still restricted today. On a small rise in the dunes, the boomtown of Kolmanskop grew almost overnight. Its name is often traced to a transport driver, Johnny Coleman, who abandoned his ox wagon on an incline opposite the settlement during a sandstorm. Its new residents built a German town in the middle of the desert: solid houses, a school, a ballroom, a theater and sports hall, a casino, a skittle alley, an ice factory and a power station. Its hospital is often said to have had the first X-ray machine in the southern hemisphere. Fresh water was shipped about 1,000 km from Cape Town. A small tram delivered ice and soda water to homes. The boom didn't last. The local diamond field began running down after World War I. In 1928, far richer diamond deposits were discovered about 270 km to the south, on the beach terraces near the Orange River, and the industry moved there. Kolmanskop's residents followed, and the town emptied. By 1956, it was abandoned. The desert started taking it back almost immediately. Sand blew through broken windows and open doorways, piling up in drifts inside the houses, burying floors, climbing walls and filling rooms. The extremely dry climate preserved the buildings' Edwardian-era architecture even as the dunes moved in. In 1980, Kolmanskop's tourism potential was rediscovered. A few buildings were dug out of the sand and restored, and guided tours began. The town has since become one of the most photographed ghost towns in the world, and a filming location for movies such as The King Is Alive. Most of Kolmanskop has been left as the sand found it. Each year, the dunes push a little further into the town.