4. Kolmanskop, Namibia
Kolmanskop is now a ghost town in southern Africa’s Namib Desert, but it wasn’t always like this. It all started in 1908, when a Namibian railway worker was shoveling railroad tracks when something bright and shiny caught his eye. His German employer quickly identified the shiny stones and they were actually diamonds.
Nevertheless, his discovery attracted many diamond seekers and adventurers who settled in Kolmanskop. By 1912, Kolmanskop generated a million carats a year (11.7% of the world’s diamond production).
The city became very opulent, it even had a hospital, a ballroom, a butcher, a baker, a post office, an ice factory and fresh water brought by rail. In its golden period, European opera groups even came to perform. However, the town was populated by less than 400 people. After becoming Africa’s richest towns from that period, Kolmanskop became a ghost town in the following decades.
The city was declared a Restricted Diamond area in 1908, but its decline began soon after World War I, when they ran out of diamonds, but it was ultimately abandoned in 1956, when its residents moved to the south, leaving their homes and possessions behind.
If you visit Kolmanskp nowadays, the dunes that once rolled over the railway tracks where the diamonds were found now burst through the ghost town’s doors, filling its buildings with smooth banks of sand. Every house is now buried in the sand and the whole town has been getting eaten by the desert. However, tourists can’t visit this restricted area without having a permit.
