Everywhere people feverishly started to dig for diamonds. The richest finds were made on the Colesberg Koppie, later the site of the Kimberley Mine. The hill, which had contained the first finds, was soon carried off and the prospectors had to drive a shaft into the earth. So, over the course of years, the deepest hole ever dug by man took shape.

The first houses built by the diamond seekers are now the town centre of Kimberley. The area’s biggest attraction is still the "Big Hole", even though they stopped digging for diamonds here a long time ago. Around the former mine a highly informative museum has been established with beautifully restored buildings and a permanent exhibition about the diamond rush.

Top: The "Big Hole" of Kimberley.
Bottom: Diamond diggers, historical drawing,
Cape Archives, colouring © KGH

Travel tips and accommodation

Kimberley
Northern Cape

The history of the town of Kimberley started with the first diamond finds in South Africa in 1867. The farm boy Erasmus Jacobs had discovered an unusually glittering stone and brought it home for his sisters to play with. His parents had it analysed and identified as a diamond. But the big diamond rush only broke out three years later, when a whole handful of such stones was found on the farm Zandfontein of Nicolaas de Beers. More than 30,000 people came to the area, and the de Beers were happy to sell their otherwise not very profitable farm for 6,300 pounds.