The Decades Challenge

 I decided to join in the Decades Challenge. 

Not so much for the gameplay, but to build. I do not have a lot of time lately, but I have finished the first lot, and the second is almost done. 

De Beers Consolidated

History behind the build:

(credit to Wikipedia)

In 1866, Erasmus Jacobs found a small brilliant pebble on the banks of the Orange River, on the farm De Kalk leased from local Griquas, near Hopetown, which was his father's farm. He showed the pebble to his father, who then sold it.^[3]:16 The pebble was purchased from Jacobs' father by Schalk van Niekerk, who later sold it on again. It proved to be a 21.25-carat (4.3 g) diamond, and became known as the Eureka. Three years later, in 1869, an 83.5-carat (16.7 g) diamond, which became known as the Star of South Africa, was found nearby (29°3′S 23°58′E).^[4][5] This diamond was sold by van Niekerk for £11,200, and later resold in the London market for £25,000.^[3]

Colonial Commissioners arrived in New Rush on 17 November 1871 to exercise authority over the territory on behalf of the Cape Governor. Digger objections and minor riots led to Governor Barkly's visit to New Rush in September the following year, when he revealed a plan instead to have Griqualand West proclaimed a Crown Colony. Richard Southey would arrive as Lieutenant-Governor of the intended Crown Colony in January 1873. Months passed however without any sign of the proclamation or of the promised new constitution and provision for representative government. The delay was in London where Secretary of State for the Colonies, John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley, insisted that before electoral divisions could be defined, the places had to receive "decent and intelligible names. His Lordship declined to be in any way connected with such a vulgarism as New Rush and as for the Dutch name, Vooruitzigt … he could neither spell nor pronounce it."^[7]:115 The matter was passed to Southey who gave it to his Colonial Secretary J.B. Currey. Roberts writes that "when it came to renaming New Rush, [Currey] proved himself a worthy diplomat. He made quite sure that Lord Kimberley would be able both to spell and pronounce the name of the main electoral division by, as he says, calling it 'after His Lordship'." New Rush became Kimberley.

As miners arrived in their thousands the hill disappeared and subsequently became known as the Big Hole (or Kimberley se Gat in Afrikaans) or, more formally, Kimberley Mine. From mid-July 1871 to 1914, 50,000 miners dug the hole with picks and shovels, yielding 2,722 kg of diamonds. The Big Hole has a surface of 17 hectares (42 acres) and is 463 meters wide. It was excavated to a depth of 240 m, but then partially infilled with debris reducing its depth to about 215 m; since then it has accumulated water to a depth of 40 m leaving 175 m visible. Beneath the surface, the Kimberley Mine underneath the Big Hole was mined to a depth of 1097 meters. A popular local myth claims that it is the largest hand-dug hole on the world, however Jagersfontein Mine appears to hold that record.^[10] The Big Hole is the principal feature of a May 2004 submission which placed "Kimberley Mines and associated early industries" on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative Lists.^[11][12]

By 1873 Kimberley was the second largest town in South Africa, having an approximate population of 40,000.

The various smaller mining companies were amalgamated by Cecil Rhodes and Charles Rudd into De Beers, and The Kimberley under Barney Barnato. In 1888, the two companies merged to form De Beers Consolidated Mines, which once had a monopoly over the world's diamond market.

Many of the buildings and The Great Hole (the actual mine), form part of a museum, and I am going to recreate many of the shops and parts of the museum in this challenge. 

I started with the mine. The Big Hole is currently filled with water, and I gave my own interpretation on how it would have looked at the time the diamonds were discovered in my own build. So the miners just started on digging the hole. 

This is how it looks today: 

My Build:

This is a generic lot. Any of your sims can pay it a visit, or if you allow your imagination to run wild, you can "go to work" there. Happy mining, and I hope you find a lot of diamonds. 

The mining hole in my build is not yet that deep, since they only recently started mining for the diamonds there. This represent only one of the clams. There were many others in the vicinity at the time. 

See more photos in my album

In the last three pictures are photos of Cecil J Rhodes, Charles D Rudd and Barney Barnato, who were the founders of the De Beers Consolidated Group, and who played a major role in the diamond and gold mining business for a number of years.

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