The controversial Moroccan Wall, or The Berm, is a system of 3m-high walls at least 2,500km long that was built to completely divide the entire country of Western Sahara.

Constructed by Moroccan forces between 1980 and 1987, Morocco considers the area to the west of the wall to be its Southern Provinces, and decided to protect them from Polisario forces seeking Western Sahara’s independence.

The protected area was initially just a small portion of the north-western part of the country, but by building a succession of six different walls, the Moroccans expanded their territory to occupy the majority of the country.

The area east of the wall is called the Free Zone and is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, though refugees from the area currently live in Algeria. UN troops are active in the area attempting to enforce cease-fire agreements, though landmines are still a major problem. Polisario supporters have labelled the barrier the Wall of Shame.

The wall begins its journey to Morocco at the Atlantic coast, and on its way crosses mountainous areas, as well as barren, unpopulated desert – where it’s often overrun by sand dunes.

Despite these breaches, the combination of walls, fences, and bunkers makes for a formidable obstruction, thanks to manned observation posts – which in some areas are positioned as regularly as every kilometre.

These forward posts are supported by larger, more heavily armed posts, one of which we can see here next to an ‘official’ border post in the south. Elsewhere we can see what looks like the charred remains of another. I wonder what happened here?

More on the Moroccan Wall at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Chris.

These buildings are what make up Molodyozhnaya, one of the original Soviet research stations in Antarctica, and the site of an unusually large number of plane crashes.

The research station was established way back in 1962 to study meteorology, and was the launch site of over 1000 sounding rockets. But after the Soviet collapse, Russia cut back their expenditure on Antarctica explorations and permanently closed the station.¹

Just to the west of the station, we find our first crashed plane in the snow. This Aeroflot Il-14 was heading back to the USSR when the engine failed shortly after take-off, and the plane crashed, killing 4 of the 7 passengers.

Despite the crash site being very clearly visible, this didn’t happen anytime recently. The image was taken in February 2006, but the crash itself occurred all the way back in 1979!

The cold weather has preserved the crashed plane, and the harsh conditions make any attempt to move it impossible.

Browsing around the area, we can spot another four planes, all seemingly crashed and abandoned. Perhaps this the real reason for closing the station – they kept losing too many planes!

Thanks to GEarthHacks.

Written in the sands of the Atacama Desert, Chile, are the words “ni pena ni miedo” which translate more or less as “No shame nor fear”, and together they form what must surely be the world’s largest poem.

While we’ve seen large type in every corner of the world, in this particular case the absolute enormity of the words is jaw dropping. The four words are in excess of 3.15 kilometres long!¹

The poem is the work of Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, a man who suffered directly at the hands of the military dictatorship that ruled Chile during the 70s and 80s. Zurita said that during Augusto Pinochet’s regime he “began to imagine writing poems in the sky, on the faces of cliffs, in the desert”.

In 1982 Zurita published part two of his “Anteparaiso” poetic trilogy, which he then had written in the skies above New York by five aeroplanes in 8 kilometre high letters. In the 90s, Zurita turned his attention to this bit of desert, where he had the sand bulldozed into these magnificent words.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this exceptional land art is the attention to detail that has been lavished upon it. It’s obvious that the shapes of the letters themselves are exquisitely crafted – but zooming in closer reveals the huge effort that must have gone into the process.

Due to the nature of deserts, these words should have been swept away by the wind many years ago. However, it seems that the local village has taken stewardship of the poem, and sends the local children out every Sunday to maintain the shifting sands.

See our related posts on LUECKE, The Readymix Logo, Mundi Man and Marree Man for more enormous artworks.

Thanks to Frank Taylor at the ever-informative Google Earth Blog, and yipero at the newly renovated Keyhole Forums.

This is the first in an occasional series where we’ll be looking at some of the world’s most interesting abandoned places.

In 1908, diamonds were discovered in the Namib Desert, and one of the towns that sprang up to provide shelter and entertainment for the influx of miners was Kolmanskop.

Modelled on a German town, at its height it boasted a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theatre and casino and railway line.

10 years later the end of World War I saw a huge drop in diamond prices, which heralded the beginning of the end for Kolmanskop. In 1936 larger deposits of more valuable diamonds were found near the coast, and the miners began to leave for the newly founded town of Oranjemund.

By the 1950s Kolmanskop was completely deserted, and the sweeping desert sand began to reclaim the town, wearing down the buildings and filling them slowly with sand.

More recently, Kolmanskop has been featured in movies, and today it’s a popular tourist destination run by the De Beers diamond company. It has been extensively documented by the photographers of Flickr, and has even inspired whole albums.

There’s more about Kolmanskop and Oranjemund on Wikipedia.

Thanks to Phillip Lockwood-Holmes.

Here in Marfa, TX, we can see the patterns of 15 Untitled Works in Concrete, a massive concrete installation at the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum conceived and founded by the artist responsible – Donald Judd.

Judd was a minimalist sculptor who purchased this 1.4 km² of desert in 1979 as a non-profit art foundation dedicated to Judd and his contemporaries, like the previously featured (1, 2, 3) GSS favourite Claes Oldenburg.

15 Untitled Works in Concrete actually consists of sixty five-metre-long concrete boxes, which are divided into fifteen differently arranged groups. The entire piece stretches nearly a kilometre across the desert, which might explain why it took Judd four years to complete!

The Chinati Foundation website has some good photos images of the work from the ground.

Thanks to Nathaniel, who has actually eaten lunch inside one of these pieces of art!