8 Striking Lost Cities and Structures Reclaimed by Nature
3. Kolmanskop, Namibia
An abandoned building being taken over by encroaching sand, Kolmanskop ghost town, Namib Desert.
Image Credit: Kanuman / Shutterstock
The town of Kolmanskop’s story begins in 1908, when a railway worker spotted some glimmering stones amongst the sprawling sands of the Namib desert in southern Africa. Those precious stones turned out to be diamonds, and by 1912 Kolmanskop had been built to house the region’s blossoming diamond mining industry. At its height, the town was responsible for more than 11% of the world’s diamond production.
Despite uprisings and violent territorial disputes, the town’s colonial German prospectors earned vast riches from the enterprise. But the boom wouldn’t last forever: the discovery of bountiful diamond fields to the south in 1928 saw Kolmanskop’s inhabitants abandon the town en masse. Over the following decades, its few remaining residents left, and the town was swallowed up by the dunes that had once supplied the reason for its existence
An abandoned building being taken over by encroaching sand, Kolmanskop ghost town, Namib Desert.
Image Credit: Kanuman / Shutterstock
The town of Kolmanskop’s story begins in 1908, when a railway worker spotted some glimmering stones amongst the sprawling sands of the Namib desert in southern Africa. Those precious stones turned out to be diamonds, and by 1912 Kolmanskop had been built to house the region’s blossoming diamond mining industry. At its height, the town was responsible for more than 11% of the world’s diamond production.
Despite uprisings and violent territorial disputes, the town’s colonial German prospectors earned vast riches from the enterprise. But the boom wouldn’t last forever: the discovery of bountiful diamond fields to the south in 1928 saw Kolmanskop’s inhabitants abandon the town en masse. Over the following decades, its few remaining residents left, and the town was swallowed up by the dunes that had once supplied the reason for its existence
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12 May 2023
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