Jagersfontein Mine

The Open Mine Museum - Jagers Mining Village

Useful Information

Location:	Jagersfontein. R706, 110 km south-west of Bloemfontein. (-29.765417, 25.419086)
Open:	closed. [2023]
Fee:	closed. [2023]
Classification:	Diamond Mine Open Cast Mining
Light:	Incandescent Electric Light System
Dimension:	D=213 m.
Guided tours:
Photography:
Accessibility:
Bibliography:
Address:	Jagers Mining Village,
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1870	first diamond found by a farmer named J. J. de Klerk.
1871	town Jagersfontein founded.

Description

The Jagersfontein Mine is a huge open cast mine, and is the biggest man made hole on Earth. If you are confused now, that's okay: it is always said that the Big Hole at Kimberly was the biggest man made hole. But they never really checked this, it was a convenient assumption, and good for tourism, and so they used it and still use it, although it is reportedly untrue.

Jagersfontein mining started three years earlier than Kimberly, the mine is the oldest of its kind. The world's biggest vertical man-made hole and was dug using only pick, shovel and dynamite. It produced two of the ten largest natural diamonds of the world, the 972-carat Excelsior diamond and the 637-carat Reitz diamond, today called the Jubilee. The mining continued for about one century, with slow-downs during the World Wars. But today mining has ended and the mines are closed.

We made this listing because there were actual mining related tourist attractions in this town. There was the Open Mine Museum and Jagers Mining Village is a sort of open air museum of the early mining history. It seems Jagers Mining Village was never completed and the museum was closed. Currently, there is not one mining related tourist venue in the town. We keep the listing because of the importance of the mine, and we recommend to find an outlook, there are several public roads along the open cast. Take some pictures for free.