See eerie pictures inside a Namibian ghost town

The Namib Desert’s arid conditions preserve the lush decorations of the early-20th-century town—but encroaching dunes could soon swallow what remains.

The town was already in decline by the early 1930s, a scant couple decades after its precipitous rise. By 1956, it was fully abandoned.

The area’s name seemed to portend its fate: It was called Kolmanskop, or Kolman’s Knoll, after a worker who had abandoned his ox cart there during a sandstorm years before the town’s founding.

Though located in the middle of a desolate stretch of desert, Kolmanskop enjoyed quite a few luxuries, including a hospital, staffed by two German doctors; a pub; an ice factory; an alley for skittle, the beloved, bowling-like lawn game; and a music hall, which hosted local gymnasts and thespians, as well as European opera companies.

At first, diamonds were so plentiful workers could pluck them from the sand—they were even visible in moonlight. As years passed, mining became much more intensive.

The townspeople’s excessive luxury was a sharp contrast to the living conditions of the laborers who provided their wealth. Tribespeople displaced by the restricted mining zone were often employed as miners, forced to live on cramped, barracks-like compounds for months at a time.

Now owned and maintained as a tourist attraction by a private company, Kolmanskop requires permits to enter, and visitors must be part of a guided tour given in German or English.

Water hauled in by rail once irrigated lawns and gardens in Kolmanskop. Now the abandoned town is collapsing, reclaimed by the desert.