BEICHUAN, China — The crumpled ruins of Beichuan, the most seriously damaged major town in the Sichuan earthquake zone, are to be preserved as a museum and memorial.

The local government wants it to become not just a place to remember the 8,600 dead — almost half the town’s population — but somewhere the Chinese people can learn to prevent similar disasters.

After securing the collapsed and leaning homes, schools, and office blocks, it wants to leave them as they are.

“It is early days but a final decision needs to be made by the state council,” a spokesman for Mianyang city government, which overseas the town, Zhang Jie, said.

Beichuan sits in a cleft in the mountains which rise up from the rice-growing plains of Sichuan. It was only built in 1951 — the town’s original site was considered too much of an earthquake risk.

The valley sits on the Longmen or Dragon Gate seismic fault, which triggered the quake. Landslides from both sides of the valley engulfed the town’s two halves.

The question of what to do with the survivors of Beichuan and other shattered towns and villages is one of many huge challenges for the government. Yesterday it issued an international appeal for 3.3 million more tents to house the homeless.

It also increased the official death toll to 51,151, with 29,328 still missing. Of the survivors, it said 4,000 were orphans. The authorities are also faced with a more immediate challenge with regards to Beichuan than its long-term future.

Above the town, more landslides have formed a natural but unstable dam with a reservoir now grown to a quarter of a mile long, on the river about three miles away to the north. It is one of 34 “barrier lakes” formed across the region.

Engineers are considering how to release the pressure before the dam bursts and floods the valley.

Even if that danger is avoided, it is “certain” that Beichuan will never be rebuilt where it is, its party secretary, Song Ming, told state press and broadcast outlets.

“It is impossible to rebuild the county seat at the original location or nearby,” he said. A new location will probably be found on lower ground 12 miles away.

Mr. Zhang said turning the town into a memorial would raise difficult questions about whether to try to exhume the remaining hundreds of bodies from the wreckage.

He said 80% of the buildings in the old part of town and 60% in the new part were flattened. The plan was welcomed by some of the remaining residents.

“It’s so sad so many people died,” said Ling Kaishun, 54, who had just carried his 97-year-old father to where his home once stood.

“This can be a remembrance of history,” Mr. Ling said. “We really should carry this plan out.”