Kolmanskop: The Namibian Diamond Town the Desert Is Slowly Swallowing

One evening in 1908, a Namibian railway worker named Zacharias Lewala was shoveling sand off the train tracks in the Namib Desert when he noticed some stones shining in the low light. He showed them to his German supervisor, August Stauch. Stauch had previously worked for De Beers. He knew exactly what he was looking at.

Within weeks, the German colonial government had declared a 26,000-square-mile Sperrgebiet, a forbidden zone, across southern Namibia. Within a few years, a full town had grown in the desert, producing a million carats a year and twelve percent of the world’s total diamond supply. By 1928, the diamonds had run out. By 1956, the last family had walked out. The desert moved in.

Now sand fills the rooms to waist height. It buries grand pianos. It has reclaimed the ballroom where orchestras from Europe once performed. Wind reshapes the dunes between visits, so the same room looks different every time someone enters it.

What They Built Out There

The absurdity of what Kolmanskop once was is part of what makes it so strange to look at now. The German settlers who rushed in after Lewala’s discovery were not roughing it. They built the southern hemisphere’s first X-ray machine here, in a hospital in the Namib Desert. They built Africa’s first tram line to move people and goods around the town. Then, they built a casino, a theater, a bowling alley, an ice factory, and a power station. Water arrived by train from miles away, used largely to maintain lush gardens that residents grew in the desert to remind themselves of home.

Around 1,200 German residents lived here at peak operation, alongside roughly 800 Namibian laborers who occupied separate compounds and received no share of the wealth they helped extract. Opera companies shipped in from Europe performed in the concert hall. Someone kept a pet ostrich. The diamonds were so abundant in the early years that workers walked the desert floor with empty jars, picking up stones directly from the sand.

The town produced five million carats in its first six years. Then the surface diamonds were gone. Mining went deeper and became more expensive. Then, in 1928, prospectors found richer deposits 170 miles to the south near the Orange River. The residents left in waves. The last family walked out in 1956. Nobody had time to organize a proper departure.

How to Get There

Kolmanskop sits about six miles inland from Lüderitz, a coastal town in the extreme southwest of Namibia. You need a permit to enter, because the site falls within the old Sperrgebiet, now part of the Tsau//Khaeb National Park. Standard tickets run about $5 and allow entry between 8am and 1pm. Photography day passes cost around $16 and let you in from sunrise to sunset, which is when you want to be there.

Lüderitz is not a quick detour from anywhere. It sits about seven to eight hours by road from Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, on roads that vary in quality. The effort is deliberate. You plan a specific trip to get there. The best months are May through September, Namibia’s dry winter, when temperatures are tolerable and the light is good. Arrive when the gates open before the guided tour groups start at 9:30am. By afternoon the wind picks up and the sand moves.