Location: Settlement – Sports centre-Opencast mine II
Since 1900, Lucherberg has been decisively characterised by lignite mining. Bare spoil heaps, a large hole filled with water, a boggy mud lake and crater-like areas piled up all around. The area surrounding the briquette factory looked desolate. There was not a single garden, tree or bush that was not covered in smoke and soot.
For better or worse, the people who lived here had to put up with these conditions. At that time, there was no mining law with mandatory recultivation for exhausted open-cast mines and no regulations for filter systems for factories. In tough negotiations with the mining company, the municipality endeavoured to achieve recultivation from 1950 onwards; this goal was achieved in 1965.
Opencast mine II was further developed in 1912 for the extraction of suitable coal.1915, however, the open-cast mine was already exhausted. From 1917, it was partially backfilled with overburden from the Lucherberg III opencast mine. A slag heap was also added, today’s old dump. The site was left to its own devices for decades. It was not until 1960 that work began on preparing the land for the building of a housing estate, a sports ground and an allotment garden colony.
The miners‘ housing estate was finally completed in 1964 with around 300 flats by the “Gemeinnützige Siedlungs-Gesellschaft” of the Rhenish lignite mining district. The population of Lucherberg more than doubled as a result. While the town had 585 inhabitants in 1962, by 1967 there were already 1267.
The first FC Jugend Lucherberg matches were played near the village from 1919, from 1921 onwards on a sports field opposite the Waagmühle. A new sports ground was built on a plot of land on the slag heap in 1957, which was replaced by the construction of the housing estate at the current location in 1965.