Abontjeman is an abandoned settlement in
Brokopondo District
Brokopondo is a district of Suriname. Its capital city is Brokopondo; other towns include Brownsweg and Kwakoegron.
The district has a population of 15,909, and an area of 7,364 square kilometres.
History
The Brokopondo district was established ...
,
Suriname
Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. It is a developing country with a Human Development Index, high level of human development; i ...
. It was located along the
Sara Creek, and used to be inhabited by
maroons
Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas and islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery, through flight or manumission, and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with Indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into ...
. The village was flooded in 1964 after the construction of the
Afobaka Dam.
Abontjeman used to have a train station on the
Lawa Railway
The Lawa Railway (Dutch language, Dutch: ''Lawaspoorweg'' or later ''Landsspoorweg'') was a single-track metre gauge railway in Suriname. It was built during the gold rush in the early 20th century, from the harbour town Paramaribo to Dam at the ...
. In the 1920s, Elwyn Benjamin Fairweather, a bauxite entrepreneur from
British Honduras
British Honduras was a Crown colony on the east coast of Central America — specifically located on the southern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula from 1783 to 1964, then a self-governing colony — renamed Belize from June 1973 , cleared a long path from Abontjeman to the
Marowijne River
The Maroni () or Marowijne (; ) is a river in South America that forms the border between French Guiana and Suriname.
Course
The Maroni runs through the Guianan moist forests ecoregion.
It originates in the Tumuk Humak Mountains and forms ...
with the intention of building of road. Fairweather's company ceased to exist in 1943.
References
Former populated places in Suriname
{{Suriname-geo-stub