Kolmanskop, Namibia

The story begins in the late 19th century, after Germany declared the area its protectorate, German South-West Africa. German trader Adolf Lüderitz bought a stretch of coast from local tribes for next to nothing and, with government backing, founded a town that carried his name. Few Europeans were eager to move there: endless dunes, no familiar infrastructure, and the poisoned arrows of displaced Herero warriors kept most settlers away. The Namib Desert inspired real, well-earned fear.

Africa was already famous for its gems—South Africa had recently produced a record-breaking diamond of more than 3,000 carats—so rumors of more stones farther north spread quickly. In 1908 a railroad worker, Zacharias Lewala, picked up a shiny pebble near a hill where a prospector named Coleman had met his death. His foreman, August Stauch, recognized it as a diamond and immediately staked a claim.

Almost overnight a brand-new town called Kolmanskop (named for Coleman) rose out of the sand just outside Lüderitz. It looked like a neat Bavarian village transplanted to Africa: schools, a hospital, a dance hall, a sports field, its own power plant, even an ice factory. Mining was done in a peculiar way. Because the diamonds lay right on the surface, workers crawled across the blistering sand at night—when the heat was bearable—sifting it through mesh screens. Security was extreme: after every shift laborers were given laxatives and run through the first X-ray machine in all of southern Africa, imported solely to spot gems hidden inside their bodies.

Kolmanskop boomed—until the surface deposits were exhausted. Geologists realized that the diamonds had washed down the Orange River into the Atlantic, then been thrown back onto the desert by surf and wind, mostly near Lüderitz. Everything on top had been scooped up, and digging deeper proved useless; there were no stones underground. At that point grim tales started to spread among the miners: they had angered the spirits of the desert.

From 100 Cursed Places · Fern Flower Press