in studies on the economy of the Polish People’s republic, investment policy takes a special place, and especially its impact on fluctuations in economic growth, economic imbalance and low living standards of the population. it is not without reason that the size and structure of investments are treated as important factors responsible for repeated deep socio-economic crises in the People’s republic of Poland, which in 1989 led to the fall of the so-called real socialism (Cheliński, 1964; Kołodko, 1976; Kotowicz-Jawor, 1979; Landau, 1986; Stankiewicz, 1986; Jezierski, 1987; Chojnowski, 2000; Kaliński, 2007). in the research on investment processes, much attention is paid to the forced industrialization during the six-year plan (1950–1955) and gierek’s acceleration in the 1970s. the period 1956–1970, when the state leadership belonged to Władysław gomułka, enjoys less interest from researchers. Meanwhile, the 1960s were remembered as a time of no lesser investment effort of a very specific nature. Similarly to the 1950s and 1970s, it was dominated by expenditure on industry, but a characteristic feature of the gomułka decade was the huge involvement in the extraction of energy and chemical raw materials and the development of energy and chemical industry. Some of these investments still had a significant impact on the structure of Polish industry in the first decades of the 21st century (e.g. hard coal and lignite mining, coal-based energy, copper mining and metallurgy, petrochemistry, nitrogen industry). Some turned out to be ephemeral, as their effects soon became a thing of the past (e.g. sulfur extraction and processing). the article presents selected industrial facilities that have successfully survived since the 1960s and are still important elements in the Polish industry, as well as those that, for various reasons, disappeared from the economic map of Poland at the turn of the century.