Kolmanskop, Namibia.

Mysterious Places 33.
Mysterious Places 34.
Mysterious Places 35.
Kolmanskop was a small settlement in Namibia that saw a boom in the early 1900s when German settlers realized that the area was rich in diamonds. The surge of wealth gave out after WWI, however, when the diamond field began to deplete. By the 1950s, the town was completely deserted, and is now visited by photographers and tourists.

Kolmanskop (Afrikaans for Coleman's hill, German: Kolmannskuppe) is a ghost town in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, 10 kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz. It was named after a transport driver named Johnny Coleman who, during a sand storm, abandoned his ox wagon on a small incline opposite the settlement. Once a small but very rich mining village, it is now a popular tourist destination run by the joint firm NamDeb (Namibia-De Beers).
In 1908, the worker Zacharias Lewala found a diamond while working in this area and showed it to his supervisor, the German railway inspector August Stauch. Realizing the area was rich in diamonds, German miners began settlement, and soon after the German government declared a large area as a "Sperrgebiet", starting to exploit the diamond field.
Driven by the enormous wealth of the first diamond miners, the residents built the village in the architectural style of a German town, with amenities and institutions including a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theatre and sport-hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray-station in the southern hemisphere, as well as the first tram in Africa. It had a railway link to Lüderitz.
The town started to decline after World War I when the diamond-field slowly started to deplete. By the early-’30s, the area was in decline. Hastening the town’s demise was the discovery in 1928 of the richest diamond-bearing deposits ever known. These were on the beach terraces 270km south of Kolmanskop, near the Orange River. Many of the town’s inhabitants joined the rush to the south, leaving their homes and possessions behind. The new diamond find merely required scouting the beaches as opposed to more difficult mining. The town was ultimately abandoned in 1954. The geological forces of the desert mean that tourists now walk through houses knee-deep in sand. Kolmanskop is popular with photographers for its settings of the desert sands' reclaiming this once-thriving town. Due to its location within the restricted area (Sperrgebiet) of the Namib desert, tourists need a permit to enter the town. Permits can be bought at the gate into the town and tours run daily at 9:30am and 11am local time (GMT+2), 10am on a Sunday.

Credited from smash.com and en.wikipedia.org

Mga Komento

Mag-post ng isang Komento

Mga sikat na post sa blog na ito

Mysterious abandoned places – Notch Hill church in Tappen, BC, Canada.

Imahe
The light is from the train coming up behind it. Since this picture became popular on the internet and got a bit of press, they decided to restore the church. As mysterious places go, this one is seriously creepy. Notch Hill church in Tappen, BC, Canada. Notch Hill church in Tappen, BC, Canada. 1885-1886, the town of Notch Hill grew as a result of the CPR having the ‘pusher engines’ located there. Notch Hill was known as having the steepest grade in Canada and needed ‘pusher engines’ to assist the trains from Chase in the west and Tappen in the east. Many of the towns’ folk were CPR employees; engineers, oilers, wipers, station agent and section workers. Three of these CPR employees were Mr. William Loftus, Mr. Carl Frederickson and Mr. Joseph Callaghan; volunteers in the construction of Holy Cross Church. By the 1960’s the CPR built a second and third set of tracks which forced parishioners to walk on the right of way or trespass through farmers’ fields. There was also...
Magbasa nang higit pa

San Zhi City, UFO Pods, Taiwan.

Imahe
Taiwan’s other-worldly “ruins of the future” are a set of pod-like buildings built in 1978 as a vacation resort. However, two years later the project collapsed due to financial problems and a number of deaths during construction. Deserted for a further 28 years, demolition finally began in 2008. Despite the original structures’ futuristic design, the land remains rooted in the past with current developers hoping once again to build a seaside retreat in the area. The  Sanzhi UFO houses  ( Chinese :  三芝飛碟屋 ;  pinyin :  Sānzhī Fēidiéwū ), also known as the  Sanzhi pod houses  or  Sanzhi Pod City , were a set of abandoned and never completed pod-shaped buildings in  Sanzhi District ,  New Taipei City ,  Taiwan . The buildings resembled  Futuro houses , some examples of which can be found elsewhere in Taiwan.  The site where the buildings were located was owned by Hung Kuo Group. Credited From www. smash.com and  ...
Magbasa nang higit pa

Surtsey, Iceland

Imahe
When people try to convince you there's nothing new under the sun, direct them to the Icelandic island of  Surtsey . Before 1963, it didn't exist. Then, an underwater volcano in the Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar) erupted, and when the activity settled down in 1967, what remained was an island where no island had been before. ____________________________________________________________________ Surtsey  (" Surtr 's island" in  Icelandic , pronounced  /ˈsʏr̥tsei/ ) is a  volcanic  island located in the  Vestmannaeyjar   archipelago  off the southern coast of  Iceland . At  63.303°N 20.605°W , Surtsey is the  southernmost point of Iceland . It was formed in a  volcanic eruption  which began 130 metres (426 ft) below sea level, and reached the surface on 14 November 1963. The eruption lasted until 5 June 1967, when the island reached its maximum size of 2.7...
Magbasa nang higit pa