GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ARDECHE

Passing travellers to Villeneuve-de-Berg are already in a glowing hamlet called «Les Mines», often without knowing what history this curious quarter of Saint-Priest was attached. A story that marked very much its red footprint - the colour of iron ore - the entire Privas region in the th century, the "industrial" history that was quickly wanted to erase memories and landscape. It was in 1843 that the first concession of the Privas basin was used on a deposit of high-quality iron ore which allowed local and regional industry to develop through the transformation of this raw material, which was not found in Saint-Etienne or Alès - coal. At that time, we are fighting for the best concessions, including the one in Saint-priest that came into operation in 1849. A particularly extensive concession where almost 500 miners and workers were employed to extract nearly 4 million tons of iron ore through a century of exploitation. Iron ore, channelled to the Pouzin blast furnace, then crossed Privas into more smashing the road - think that diligence took twelve hours to connect Le Pouzin to the Prefecture! For this reason, the Paris-Lyon-Marseille company was awarded a concession to build the first railway of the Ardèche linking the Valley of the Rhone to Saint-Priest. But depletion of the deposit, competition from open skies in Africa and the disastrous «tourism» image of its mines inevitably lead to their final closure in 1950. With a strong emphasis on the landscape with quarries of marne used to backfill galleries, leaving a gigantic built heritage, wells, chevalements, factories and an important cultural heritage - preserved until now at the Ardéchoise Earth Museum - mines still seem to have never existed! And you must venture through abundant vegetation or along the old track dismantled to discover the deposits of the past, such as this impressive mine sink No. 9 classified historic monument and completely submerged in trees. To discover this exciting history, the basement of the region and the sites of exploitation, you will be contacted with interest the Geological Society of the Ardèche which has its headquarters in Saint-Priest.