Despite the town having more than 1,000 years of history and tradition, in 2006 the eastern part of the borough was cleared to make way for the Garzweiler II brown coal pit operated by RWE Power.

Embedded in the loess in places are lenses of marl that were mined until the 20th century in order to obtain lime by driving shafts and galleries underground.

Its neighbouring administrative units, clockwise from the north, are: The town of Erkelenz emerged in its present configuration as a result of the Aachen land reform bill of 21 December 1971 (the Aachen-Gesetz).

Erkelenz lost its status as the county town to Heinsberg and was amalgamated with the municipalities of Borschemich, Gerderath, Golkrath, Granterath, Holzweiler, Immerath, Keyenberg, Kückhoven, Lövenich, Schwanenberg and Venrath, as well as the parishes of Geneiken and Kuckum.

[8] According to the law, the borough of Erkelenz is divided into nine districts with a total of 46 villages and hamlets (population as at 31 October 2009):[9] The coat of arms is parted horizontally.

[11] North of the old village of Erkelenz, on the present day Mary Way (Marienweg), lay three cremation graves (Brandgräber), northwest to south of numerous fields of rubble.

Here in the southwest corner and east of the chancel of the Roman Catholic parish church there are urn graves enclosed by glacial erratics of the early Frankish period from 300 to 500 A.D. On the south and southeast edge of the market, round jars were also found in the style of Badorf ceramics from Carolingian times.

The Erkelenz chronicler Mathias Baux wrote in the 16th century that "the bushes in the middle period were cleared and the soil turned into fertile fields, so that out of the harsh wilderness a corn-rich land and overall a breezy paradise was established.

In 1473 the town came into the possession of Charles the Bold of Burgundy who, whilst at war against Lorraine in 1476, personally accepted the homage of the townsfolk of Erkelenz.

At that time the fortress of Erkelenz was so strong that Maximilian I instructed the Dukes of Jülich and Kleve, who were allied with him against Guelders, not to engage in a bombardment of the town, but to take them with the aid of storming bridges (Sturmbrücken).

In 1538 Guelders fell to William of Jülich, Cleves and Berg[34] During that period the great town fire of 1540 occurred on 21 June of that year.

After Erkelenz had been unsuccessfully besieged in 1610 during the Jülich-Cleves War of Succession, the army of the French king, Louis XIV, allied with the troops of the Archbishop of Cologne, was finally in a position to take the town on the evening of 9 May 1674.

In the years that followed industrial workers and engineers flocked to Erkelenz, creating a shortage of housing, a situation that could only be alleviated by establishing a charitable building association.

[50] Between the town centre and the railway line, a new quarter emerged, known colloquially as Kairo (pronounced: Kah-ee-roh) due to the little foreign looking towers on many of the houses.

When, on 10 May 1898, a bronze statue of Emperor William I was erected on the market place, it was illuminated, at Raky's initiative, with electric lighting from arc lamps.

In the next two decades the town built the waterworks on the present Bernhard-Hahn-Straße with its water tower visible for kilometres, the electricity works, the slaughterhouse, the swimming baths and a large school building for the gymnasium on the Südpromenade.

In 1910 Arnold Koepe built an engineering workshop in the former Karl Müller plush weaving mill in order to manufacture coal wagons for the mines.

In order to meet the wartime demand for metal, the townsfolk had to give up relevant implements and the church had to donate some of its bells in return for little compensation.

In Erkelenz this passive resistance was carried out especially by railwaymen, in the course of which the Belgian secret police expelled 14 families, including small children, who had been reported by narks.

[58] In May 1933 they forced the incumbent democratic mayor, Dr. Ernst de Werth, out of office under threat of taking him into "protective custody", made Adolf Hitler an honorary citizen and pursued political dissidents, trades unionists and clergymen.

[60] By April 1933 the NSDAP had organised a boycott of Jewish businesses in the town,[61] whilst the 1938 November pogroms (the so-called Reichskristallnacht) finally led to anti-Semitic acts of violence.

The synagogue on the Westpromenade was devastated by mobs commanded by the SS and SA, Jews were arrested and Jewish businesses in the town were plundered and demolished.

[64] Towards the end of the Second World War, as the Allies advanced towards Germany's western border in the middle of September 1944, Erkelenz was gradually cleared out, like many other places in the Aachen region.

Whilst long streams of refugees moved eastwards across the Rhine, as well as groups of fieldwork labourers there were large units of armed SA in the border region who tyrannised and robbed the remaining population.

[65] As part of the "Rur Front", anti-tank ditches were dug two kilometres (1+1⁄4 miles) west of the town in a semi-circular arc, minefields were sewn and infantry positions were constructed with extensively branched trenches in order to create a strong hedgehog defence.

Amongst the SS combat troops, the command was issued from the top to the lowest level to pull out and they did so, as did the local party functionaries, who had been burning their records for days.

When, three days later, on 26 February 1945, American armoured units of the 102nd US Infantry Division of the 9th US Army entered the town and the surrounding villages, the warning signs on the minefields indicated the safe lanes because there was no one left who could have removed them.

[66][67] As Allied forces invaded the area, the inhabitants of the surrounding villages had to leave their houses and for many days and weeks, they were driven from one place to another or concentrated in camps without enough supplies, whilst their homes were plundered, wrecked and, in many cases, set on fire.

In addition, former Russian forced labourers, who were concentrated into the nearby village of Hetzerath, armed themselves with war materiel that had been left lying around and threatened town and country by robbing, killing and starting fires.

Almost all its roads, which lay on both sides of the old Marienweg, a Marian pilgrimage route that ran to Holtum, bore the names of east German towns.