The Laura colliery was owned by the Belgian mining company Société des Charbonnages Réunis Laura et Vereeniging SA. This mining company was founded in 1899.
The name of the mine was named after Laura Wackers-Schümmer, wife of Anton Wackers and sister of Gustav Schümmer from Herzogenrath, who had obtained a coal concession in the area in 1876.
The construction of the Laura coal mine started in 1900. In 1901, the first shaft was started to be excavated and the second shaft was deepened in 1902. The first coal was produced in 1905.
Eight floors were eventually constructed at 120, 128, 153, 183, 274, 378, 550 and 680 meters below ground level. In the beginning, the mine suffered a lot from flooding. In 1908 there was a violent explosion, which killed seven people.
A briquette factory was opened at the mine in 1917, production that year amounted to over 10,000 tons. The Laura, which mainly produced anthracite, reached its peak production in 1929 with 800,200 tons of coal.
A large fault line, the Feldbiss, in the middle of the concession, prompted the construction of a new mining site with its own access shafts on the east side of the fault. In 1920, the digging of the shafts of the Julia started.
From 1967, a gradual concentration of the Laura and Julia mining sites was implemented, both above ground and underground. In early 1968, the underground integration was completed.
The entire underground occupation of the Laura was then transferred to the Julia mine, from there they could reach their old working point by means of three connecting stone corridors. From that time on, the two shafts of the Laura have been used exclusively for coal transport.
Later, the mine's laundry was decommissioned and the entire surface coal processing was concentrated on the Julia. Ultimately, the Laura mine was operated from the Julia mine seat.
In 1970, the (above-ground) demolition of the Laura began, and the shafts of the mine that had been decommissioned were also closed for good. Four years later, on Friday December 20, 1974, the Julia closed. With that, the second-to-last coal mine of
Netherlands closed.
The very last mine, the Oranje-Nassau I in Heerlen, followed a week and a half later, on December 31, 1974. As a result, coal mining in the Netherlands had come to an end. The Laura's site is now a residential area.
