Teal Room
by Inge Johnsson
Title
Teal Room
Artist
Inge Johnsson
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture, Watermark Not On Actual Print
Description
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 Luderitz. 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 L�deritz.
The town declined after World War I when the diamond-field slowly exhausted and was ultimately abandoned in 1954. The geological forces of the desert mean that tourists now walk through houses knee-deep in sand.
Uploaded
June 5th, 2016
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Viewed 2,987 Times - Last Visitor from Mount Laurel, NJ on 03/28/2024 at 1:57 PM
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Mary Ann Weger
Congratulations! Your beautiful work has been featured in the Fine Art America group “Balconies Windows and Doors”! You are invited to archive your featured image for permanent storage and for viewing on the Discussions Page—topic name: “2-OPEN - Featured Images from this Group For Permanent Archiving” Simply copy the URL at the top of your image’s profile page, and paste it into the Discussion Page theme as noted above. Group URL: http://fineartamerica.com/groups/balconies-windows-and-doors.html