Abstract: To design rational height of safety coal pillars, and reduce resource waste, it is necessary to study calculation method of "two zones" height for special structure overburden. This paper adopts the formula calculation, analogy analysis and numerical simulation methods to calculate separately the damage height of special structure overburden. The features and calculation method for development height in middle hard leaning soft overburden of shallow area are studied through analyzing contrastively the results obtained by actual observation and other methods.