The plant that stopped in 2016
The halls still read as a coal washery, not a laundry. In Dawukou, the municipal seat, the industrial heritage park occupies the former Dawukou washery of the Shenhua Ningxia Coal Group. The plant was begun in 1960, fully stopped in 2016, and covered 428 mu. Structures and machines that remained fill the rooms a visitor walks through. The stop in 2016 and the public opening that came later are two different events.
Dawukou District was established in June 1973. It covers 1,213 square kilometres, with 10 subdistricts and Xinghai Town, and about 298,300 residents at the end of 2023. The park is one site inside that district. A 2022 municipal plan calls Shizuishan the birthplace of Ningxia's first ton of coal, the first kilowatt-hour, and the first furnace of steel without pinning each first on this washery; Huinong's public materials place the same three firsts in Huinong. The plant's own span is narrower: work from 1960, a full stop in 2016.
Rooms that opened in 2020
Conversion began in 2019. The park opened to the public in October 2020, and on 8 November 2021 it was rated a national 3A scenic area. The city treats a set of rooms as finished: a new Dawukou railway station, the Ningxia Industrial Memorial Hall, a visitor centre, a hall for education on a shared Chinese identity, a city reading room, and a time corridor. Other zones were still only planned. Those plans stay plans.
The tenants named alongside the machines are Ningxia carpet, coal carving, and a media firm. A rock festival called Industrial Voice (工业之声) has run for three editions. Workshops and the festival sit on top of the plant. Indoors, the memorial hall tells the coal-city story among the washery buildings that remained after the stop in 2016.
A line drawn toward Shitanjing
A 2022 plan for industrial-culture tourism draws one route through this park, a named green passenger train, and Shitanjing—two points and one line. The plan names the train but gives neither a year nor a description of the carriages. Shitanjing is the former mining town inside the Helan Mountains, in the same Dawukou District; its streets are a separate visit, and it does not appear on the regional A-level list current through September 2024.
The sequence recorded here is work from 1960, a full stop in 2016, conversion from 2019, a public opening in October 2020, and a 3A rating on 8 November 2021.