Mitzpe Ramon

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Mitzpe Ramon

Mitzpe Ramon (lit. Ramon Lookout) is a town in the Negev

Negev

The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The indigenous Negev Bedouin inhabitants of the region refer to the desert as al-Naqab ....
desert

Désert

?D?sert? is ?milie Simon's debut single, released in October 2002. The song was a huge success both critically and commercially in her homeland....
of southern

South District (Israel)

The South District is one of Israel's Districts of Israel, and is the largest in terms of land area as well as the most sparsely populated. It covers most of the Negev desert, as well as the Arabah valley....
Israel

Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
. It is situated on the northern ridge at an elevation of 2,400 feet (800 m.) overlooking a sizable erosion cirque known as the Ramon Crater. This crater, or makhtesh
Makhtesh

A makhtesh is a geology landform regarded to be unique to the Negev desert of Israel and the Sinai Peninsula. Although commonly known as "craters" , these formations are more accurately described as erosion cirques....
, as it is called in Hebrew is 28 miles long and five miles wide.

As of 2008, Mitzpe Ramon has a population of 4,500 residents. The mayor is Flora Shoshan, sister of former Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz

Amir Peretz

Amir Peretz is an Israeli politician and member of the Knesset for the Israeli Labor Party. He is a former Defense Minister of Israel and former leader of the Labour Party, having left those positions in June 2007....
.

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Encyclopedia

Mitzpe Ramon (lit. Ramon Lookout) is a town in the Negev

Negev

The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The indigenous Negev Bedouin inhabitants of the region refer to the desert as al-Naqab ....
desert

Désert

?D?sert? is ?milie Simon's debut single, released in October 2002. The song was a huge success both critically and commercially in her homeland....
of southern

South District (Israel)

Israel

Amir Peretz

History

Mitzpe Ramon was originally founded in 1951 as a camp for the workers building the road to Eilat

Eilat

Eilat is Israel's South District city, a busy port as well as a popular resort, located at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on the Gulf of Aqaba....
. The town's first permanent residents, immigrants from North Africa and Romania, settled there in the 1960s, and it became the southernmost of the Negev's development town

Development town

Development town is a term used to refer to the new settlements that were built in Israel during the 1950s in order to expand the population of the country's peripheral areas and to ease development pressure on the country's crowded centre....
s. Mitzpe Ramon remains small and struggling, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. One of the original opportunities for founding a town in this location was to take advantage of traffic on Route 40 traveling to and returning from Eilat

Eilat

Eilat is Israel's South District city, a busy port as well as a popular resort, located at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on the Gulf of Aqaba....
in the south, a few nearby military bases and some chalk quarries. Several large military bases (with over 10,000 soldiers altogether) surround the town, including the large Ramon Airbase

Ramon Airbase

Ramon Airbase is an Israeli Air Force Military base southwest of Beersheba, near the town of Mitzpe Ramon. Also titled Kanaf 25 , it was formerly known as Matred....
. The Wise Astronomy Observatory

Wise Observatory

The Florence and George Wise Observatory is an astronomy observatory owned and operated by Tel-Aviv University. It is located 5 km west of the city of Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev desert near the edge of the Ramon Crater, and it is the only professional astronomical observatory in Israel....
is located to the east.

The development of Mitzpe Ramon was adversely affected by the opening of Route 90

Route 90 (Israel)

Route 90 is the longest road in Israel, at about 480 km, and stretches from Metula and the northern border with Lebanon, along the western side of the Sea of Galilee, through the Jordan Valley, along the western bank of the Dead Sea , through the Arabah valley, and until Eilat and the southern border with Egypt on the Red Sea....
in the late 1960s. After the inauguration of this highway, traffic to and from Eilat bypassed Mitzpe Ramon almost entirely. However, growing interest in ecotourism

Ecotourism

Ecotourism is a form of tourism, that appeals to ecologically and socially conscious individuals. Generally speaking, ecotourism focuses on volunteering, personal growth and learning new ways to live on the planet....
, jeep trekking and hiking, and the upgrading of Route 40, which is considered a more scenic route to Eilat, have improved matters since the mid-1990s.

A hotel opened in Mitzpe Ramon in the late-1990s, with an indoor swimming pool. There is a Visitors Centre overlooking the Ramon Crater and the physically fit can hike down into the crater for a 4 to 5 hour trek without any shade. Among other attractions there is a llama

Llama

The llama is a South American camelid, widely used as a pack animal by the Incas and other natives of the Andes mountains. In South America llamas are still used as beasts of burden, as well as for the production of fiber and meat....
and alpaca

Alpaca

The Alpaca is a Domestication species of South American camelid. It resembles a small llama in superficial appearance.Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of Ecuador, southern Peru, northern Bolivia, and northern Chile at an altitude of to meters above sea-level, throughout the year....
farm.

Mitzpe Ramon experiences hot, dry summers and cold winters. Snowfall occurs on average once in a couple of years.

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