Yubari Coal Mine Museum

The main building of the museum reopened after two years of major renovations. Exhibits illustrate in an easy-to-understand manner the history of the Hokkaido frontier, the growth of Yubari City with its thriving coal mining industry, its prime days when the population reached 120,000, and the closing of the coal mine, using various panels and video footage of people's lives in a chronological order and highlighted by key words. Take the elevator marked "Mineshaft gauge" to the underground levels, where you can view realistic dioramas depicting the mining methods changing with the times and learn about the hardships the miners faced.

Just south of the museum is the Yubari 24-shaku Seam Crop Coal, a coal seam formed from three layers discovered in 1888 by Ichitaro Ban, a geologist of the Hokkaido Government. Shaku is a Japanese unit of length measuring about 30 cm for 1 shaku. The layers named 10-shaku, 8-shaku, and 6-shaku for their respective thicknesses total 24-shaku, or approximately seven meters. The large-scale crop coal is the only one of its kind in Japan that can be viewed up close. Since coal mine development began just two years after the discovery of this coal seam, the area is regarded as the starting point of Yubari's development.