In April 1908, Zacharias Lewala, a railway worker, picked up what he thought was an unusually shiny stone, and showed it to his supervisor, August Stauch. Stauch immediately applied for a prospector's licence, and verification confirmed that the first diamond in the region had been found.
The diamonds were in such supply that they could be picked off the ground by bare hands, and soon the area was flooded with men wanting to make their fortune. Between 1911 and 1914, 5 million carats (1,000 kilos) of diamonds had been found.
The New Diamond Boom Town
Kolmanskop became a diamond boom town, and the quality of the small town's facilities and houses reflected the fortunes that were being made from the diamond trade.
Each house was served daily by a small train line which bought fresh ice blocks for the refrigerators and air-conditioning units, and the town had its own bakery, butchers, ice factory, cinema, school, concert hall and gymnasium, and hospital.
However, in 1928, a much larger diamond reserve was discovered at the mouth of the Orange River further south. One by one, the prospectors drifted away to the new area, and soon Kolmanskop was nothing but a ghost town, and the desert began to reclaim back its land.
The Town Today
Today, much of the town is still standing, but the desert sand has blown in and around the deserted buildings, burying some almost completely in sand.
Others are still half visible, their doors hanging open as the sand slowly engulfs more rooms.
A guided tour around this eerie and strange town is the only way to view it, and tours are given twice daily in the mornings only, in English and German simultaneously.
The tour lasts for about an hour, and is a fascinating insight into the past, and very informative. Afterwards, there is time to wander around by yourself, and take photos or explore inside many of the sand-filled houses.
It is a weird feeling to have to duck to get through an old doorway into another room, or to walk across a sand dune piled up the outside of a house and step easily over the top floor window sill into what once was the main bedroom, now just a glorified sand pit.
