Built in 1901, Meiderich Ironworks was a coal and steel production plant that operated until 1985. The site followed the typical curve of any coal plant in the twentieth century. The difference here is the many u-turns experienced in this site: the 1929 economic crisis that nearly shut down the plant, was followed by an 80-90 % production capacity increase. At the end of the Second World War Meiderich was not included in the list of industrial facilities to be dismantled by the Allies as compensation for the destruction caused by the Germans. Allies granted permission to resume production with the recommissioning of two blast furnaces. The end of the coal plant activity arrived in 1985. It took only a few years to make of Meiderich a symbol of the German industrial past. In 2008, Landschaftspark, as it is called now, became a founding member of the European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH).