Kohtla Mining Museum

The Kohtla mine was located in Ida-Virumaa, in the Kohtla-Järve region, which is a well-known mining area in Estonia. While the first written records of burning stone date back to 1777, mining began in the area in 1916 and in Kohtla twenty years later.

In 1931, the British-owned New Consolidated Gold Fields Ldt., a large company that owned gold mines in Australia, began operations in Kohtla. An 17-square-kilometer underground oil shale mine was established in 1937 to supply oil shale to the oil mills of a large British company. Over the years, six production buildings were built on the territory: an oil factory, a milling building, a laboratory, a power plant, a workshop and a storage room.