Kolmanskop takes its name from a merchant called Coleman, who lost his ox wagon in a sandstorm and ended up stranded on a hill. In 1908, a railway worker clearing sand from the tracks found a diamond, and within seven years the area had yielded 5.3 million carats.

The mining company built a town to match: Africa’s first electric street lamps, a bowling alley, a hall that hosted visiting opera singers and doubled as a church every second Sunday, and a hospital with an X-ray machine for catching smugglers. By 1956, the last residents had gone, leaving the buildings to the sand.

VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tour covers nine stops, explaining how ice was made in the desert using salt water, why builders imported sand from Europe, and how drinking water arrived by ship from Cape Town.