The Nederlands Mining Museum opened forty years after the closure of the coal mines in 1965,  to keep a deeply entrenched history alive and to continue to bring up the stories of the Limburg mining region in the 1950s.

The Dutch Mining Museum is located in the shaft building of shaft II of the Oranje-Nassau I mine. On December 31, 1974, the Oranje Nassau I was the last Dutch coal mine to close its doors. Little is left of the immense aboveground mining site. The Dutch Mining Museum is located in and around shaft II.