Grootfontein

Grootfontein is a city of 26,839 inhabitants in the Otjozondjupa region of central Namibia, on the B8 national road that runs from Otavi toward the Caprivi Strip and part of what is known as the Otavi Triangle. It was settled in 1885 when forty Boer families known as Dorsland trekkers, originally aiming for Angola, turned back and established the short-lived Republic of Upingtonia there before it was abandoned in 1887; by 1893 the town had become headquarters for the South West Africa Company. The nearby Berg Aukas and Abenab mines, which produced zinc and vanadium, were for decades the economic mainspring of the area, though they have since closed, and the town now hosts the Grootfontein Show, the country's second largest annual entrepreneurial exhibition after the Windhoek Show. Twenty four kilometers west of Grootfontein lies the Hoba meteorite, at over 60 tons the largest known meteorite on Earth.