The Deilbach Valley in the south of Essen is one of the most interesting cultural landscapes in the Ruhr region. It has five hundred years of continuous history, first as an agricultural, then very soon as an industrially used natural area.
As an early industrial monument landscape, it describes the origins of the iron and metal industry in the Ruhr region and is the equivalent of the Muttental in Witten, the cradle of Ruhr mining. But it is also the equivalent of the Zollverein coal mine, in that together it describes the entire span of industrialization from its beginnings to high industrialization on Essen soil.
The Deilbach Valley is also one of the oldest museum and monument landscapes in Germany. As early as 1917, operation of the Deil iron hammer was discontinued for reasons of profitability, but it was not subsequently demolished. Instead, in 1936/37, in a joint effort by various parties, including the Ruhrland Museum at the time, it was restored ready for operation as a "technical cultural monument" and made accessible to the public in show mode. Together with the Halbachhammer in the Nachtigallental, which had been relocated to Essen a year earlier in 1936, the iron hammer was one of the first examples of industrial culture in Europe.
As early as the 1980s, the monuments of the Deilbach Valley were made accessible by the then Ruhrland Museum of the City of Essen by means of a circular hiking trail and documented in a first exhibition in the Deilbach Valley in the carriage house. Since then, guided tours and educational museum activities have been offered regularly in the Deilbach Valley, also in connection with other outposts such as the Geological Hiking Trail at Lake Baldeney or the Mineral Museum Kupferdreh, which the Ruhr Museum operates in the south of Essen.
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