Kolmanskop ghost town is located in the middle of the desert 10 km from Luderitz and the Atlantic coast. The history of the abandoned city will take us back to the beginning of the 20th century.
In April 1908, Lüderitz-Keetmanshoop, an ordinary railroad employee, accidentally discovered a small diamond barely covered with desert sand. He showed the unusual find to the foreman of his working group August Stauch. The foreman, who inquired about the place of the find, quickly realized what was what.
Acting carefully and without attracting too much attention, Stauch explored the territory indicated by the workers and managed to find several more diamonds. As it turned out, a small river washed them out with the sand and carried them into the ocean, which, during the surf, threw them onto the shore. Then small diamonds, together with sand, were carried around by the strong wind. Within a few years, the foreman became a multimillionaire.
The increasingly famous Kolmanskop has beautiful houses, a hospital with modern equipment, an educational institution and even a sports stadium. The town flourished and its inhabitants rejoiced at new promising finds. So in the Namib desert, a real diamond rush broke out.
They say that the immense greed of people angered the gods and the precious stones on the surface suddenly ended. Fierce excavations in the Namibian desert made it clear that the hot sands do not hide any treasures. Some talked about the irony of fate, others blamed the curse for everything.
Promotional video:
After that, part of the population left Kolmanskop and life in it became unbearable: reduced funding, unemployment, sandstorms and lack of drinking water. The despair became more pronounced after the city was swept by a wave of unknown diseases and, in the end, people had to leave their homes.
Currently, dilapidated buildings are completely or half covered with sand, and the empty Kolmanskop is visited only by curious tourists.