Miners on an ‘Aerial Tram’ in the Kimberly Diamond Mine in South Africa, 1885
Who was it who said, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend?” Well, these glistening precious stones are extremely hard to find, and there was one place that was known to have them. Kimberly was a diamond mining center in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The business went into operation in 1869 and miners built an entire civilization around the mine including a system of railways to transport people to and from the dig site.
At the time that the photograph was taken, the diamond mining was controlled by De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., one of the world’s premiere diamond producers, even to this day. The wine was shut down almost 50 years later, in 1914.