An aban­doned dia­mond min­ing town. In 1908, Zacharias Lewala, a rail­way work­er, dis­cov­ered dia­monds in the area when he picked up what he thought was an unusu­al­ly shiny stone. Before World War I, over 1,000 kilo­grams of dia­monds were sift­ed from the sands of the Namib Desert, and Kol­man­skop became a dia­mond boom town. How­ev­er, dur­ing the war, dia­mond prices dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly. In addi­tion, larg­er dia­monds were lat­er found south of Kol­man­skop, in Oran­je­mu­nd. By 1956, the town was com­plete­ly aban­doned.