A Full Guide to Kolmanskop Ghost Town, Namibia

In 1908, a railway worker named Zachariahs Lewala was working his shift when, while shoveling, he suddenly found what looked like a diamond. He took it to its German supervisor August Stauch, who had a mining engineer friend confirming that it was a real diamond. Not much later, news about the diamonds spread and hordes German miners moved to the area. And so the town of Kolmanskop was founded and quickly evolved into a prosperous and luxurious village in the middle of the desert. Because of this wealth, the infrastructure in this town was unusually extensive for that time. As from 1911, the town had electric power, a school, a hospital, a butcher and ice factory, a sport hall and so much more. It even had the first x-ray machine in southern Africa.

You could almost literally pick up the diamonds in Kolmanskop off the floor, making the diamond miners in Kolmanskop richer every night. This was beyond the German authorities, who wanted greater control over this growing wealth. They took strict action, marking a large part of the southern coastal strip as a restricted area known as a “Sperrgebiet”, or ‘restricted area’, where ordinary people were not allowed to go. Instead, only one company from Berlin was given permission to mine for diamonds there. The diamond mining was industrialized which caused the numbers of minerals diminishing drastically. By 1930, the area was depleted. In addition, in 1928, bigger diamonds were found on the beach terraces further down the coast, south of Lüderitz. All machinery was taken there and all inhabitants of Kolmanskop started to move too. By 1956, the town was completely abandoned and left to the forces of nature.

In 2002, a tour company was given permission to manage and operate Kolmanskop as a tourist attraction. As a result, people can now enter the ‘restricted area’ and discover this unique place.