The Jura water correction and the villages of the Three Lakes

By NovaGB · Published on 2.11.2026

Until the 19th century, the plain between the lakes of Neuchâtel, Biel and Murten flooded regularly. Between 1868 and 1891, a building site lasting more than twenty years diverted the Aare and dug canals. The lakes dropped by more than two metres. For the lakeside villages the landscape changed: new shores appeared, prehistoric settlements emerged from the water and a marsh became a large vegetable-growing region.

A plain under water

The Grand-Marais (Grosses Moos) lies between the three lakes, the Bernese and Fribourg molasse plateau and the Jensberg. Covering 62.5 km², it is the largest marsh in Switzerland. It formed after the retreat of the Rhône glacier, on gravel laid down by the Aare. In places the peat is up to four metres thick.

In the Middle Ages, lords such as the abbey of Saint-Jean near Erlach and the counts of Neuchâtel, Nidau and Aarberg let their people mow and graze on their land. From around 1500, the marsh served as common land for the lakeside villages and for places further away. Disputes concerned rights of use. From 1785 to 1795, Bernese and Fribourg communities quarrelled in this way over the marsh.

The problem was the Aare. From the 17th century, the gravel it carried backed up the water. The Thielle (Zihl), flowing out of Lake Biel, drained badly, the lakes rose and the plain flooded. The navigation canals of the time, such as the Aarberg canal between the Broye and the Aare or the Entreroches canal near Yverdon, did nothing to help. In the 19th century, floods on the Thielle became more frequent.

Two men and a project

The project was the work of the Graubünden engineer Richard La Nicca. Born in 1794 in Safien and the first chief engineer of the canton of Graubünden, he had built Alpine roads and corrected the Rhine in the Domleschg. Between 1840 and 1842 he drew up a plan to correct the waters of the Jura. The works carried out from 1868 were based on it.

The political driving force was Johann Rudolf Schneider. Born in 1804 in Meienried, where the Thielle meets the Aare, he was a doctor and pharmacist in Nidau, then a member of the Bernese government and of the National Council. The Jura water correction was his life's work. He persuaded the Confederation to take part in this project run by the cantons concerned, and in doing so stood out as a supporter of the new federal state. Since the Constitution of 1848, the Confederation could commit itself to works of this kind.

The works of 1868-1891

The first Jura water correction had three parts. First, the Hagneck canal diverted the Aare from Aarberg into Lake Biel. Second, the Nidau-Büren canal widened the outflow of Lake Biel. Third, the Broye and Thielle canals improved the links between Lake Murten and Lake Neuchâtel, and between Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Biel. The Thielle canal was built between 1875 and 1883. At Sugiez, the course of the lower Broye was changed between 1878 and 1882.

Until then, river correction works in Switzerland relied on shovels, picks, wheelbarrows and animal-drawn carts. Steam machinery appeared on them only with the Jura water correction: excavators, cranes and tip wagons.

The result was clear. Lake Neuchâtel dropped by 2.5 to 2.7 metres, depending on the estimate. Lake Murten dropped by 3.3 metres. The floods that had devastated the plain between the lakes, the area from Büren to Solothurn and the Grand-Marais came to an end. In the Orbe plain, the canton of Vaud had already decided in 1854 to embank the river. From 1856, the correction of the Entreroches canal and the building of the western canal helped fight malaria and win new farmland.

New shores for the villages

As the lakes dropped, they uncovered strips of land. At Meyriez, a former fishing village on Lake Murten, the municipality gained a strip sixty metres wide along the shore. At Sugiez, the eastern part of the village grew after the Broye was altered.

Along the Thielle, the new canal did not follow the old course of the river. The cantonal border was therefore moved to the line of the canal in 1894. At Thielle, the castle, the old bridge and the toll house, until then on the left bank, were handed over to Bern. Today they form Pont-de-Thielle, in the Bernese municipality of Gals. Since 1888, Thielle has formed a single municipality with neighbouring Wavre.

On the south shore of Lake Neuchâtel, the exposed beaches gave rise from 1878 to the Grande Cariçaie, an area of reed beds and marshes. It now includes nine nature reserves between Yverdon-les-Bains and the area of Witzwil and Marin-Epagnier. The south shore was added in 1976 and 1990 to the list of wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. At Cheseaux-Noréaz, the house of Champ-Pittet, built in 1789-1791 right on the lakeshore, now stands at the edge of the reed beds. Since 1985 it has housed the centre of the Swiss and Vaud leagues for nature conservation, now Pro Natura.

Prehistory comes out of the water

The lowering of the lakes uncovered many prehistoric remains along the shores. At Meyriez, an oak dugout canoe survives from the Neolithic lakeside settlements found at the time. At Cortaillod, the four Neolithic stations on the lakeshore were left dry. From 1876-1879, people collected lake-dwelling antiquities there, the sites were looted and many objects went abroad, bought by museums or collectors. The Bronze Age stations of Petit-Cortaillod then began to erode.

The most famous site is La Tène, on the north shore of Lake Neuchâtel, near the mouth of the Thielle. It was spotted in November 1857 by Hans Kopp, a fisherman who collected objects for Friedrich Schwab. After the correction, Émile Vouga dug there purely to collect objects. The official excavations of 1907-1917, led by William Wavre and then Paul Vouga, uncovered the remains of two bridges over a former arm of the Thielle. The site gave its name to the later European Iron Age, the La Tène culture. In 2011, more than 4'500 objects from La Tène were held in some thirty museums. See the page on the La Tène site.

The second correction brought its own find in 1965. At Les Sauges, in the municipality of Cornaux, a wooden bridge 90 metres long was uncovered. It had crossed the Thielle in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Under the collapsed bridge lay some twenty human skeletons and the remains of cattle. The oaks had been felled in 116 BC. Whether the dead were victims of a flood or of sacrifices is not known.

From marsh to market garden

Once the water had gone, the Grand-Marais still had to be cleared and land ownership settled. This took decades. Municipalities, private owners and two prisons took part.

In 1891, the canton of Bern received 800 hectares in the Grand-Marais from a farming company that had gone bankrupt. There it built the Witzwil institution, in the municipality of Ins (Anet), to replace the old Bern penitentiary. The prisoners put up the buildings, roads and a railway siding, and brought the marsh under cultivation. At the start of the 21st century, Witzwil was the largest farm in Switzerland, with 825 hectares.

The canton of Fribourg followed in 1898 with an agricultural colony modelled on Witzwil, later the Bellechasse institution, in the municipalities of Mont-Vully and Murten. The first inmates drained the land. From 1920 to 1980, Bellechasse was also used for the administrative detention of hundreds of men and women from several cantons. In the Orbe plain, the agricultural colony of the Bochuz prison was created in 1899 on land won by the embankments.

The Grand-Marais thus became a large vegetable-growing region. Roads were rebuilt, such as the one from Galmiz to Sugiez and Ins, and the railway arrived: Murten-Lyss in 1876, Bern-Neuchâtel in 1901, Murten-Ins in 1903.

The second correction (1962-1973)

Success had a downside. As it dried, the peat settled and broke down. After some seventy years, drainage and peat cutting had made the ground sink over large areas, and new measures were needed. A second Jura water correction was carried out from 1962 to 1973 under Robert Müller. The Thielle canal was widened and Lake Neuchâtel dropped by about another metre. Since then it has been held at an average altitude of 429.3 metres.

The sinking of the soil was not solved for all that. At the end of the 20th century, in the Orbe plain, drainage, pumping and the loss of peat caused an irreversible loss of soil that forces farmers to rotate crops. In the Grand-Marais, farmers try to limit the settling with new methods. Since 1996, a network of biotopes co-funded by the Confederation has helped preserve the remaining wetlands.

The Jura water correction and the villages of the Three Lakes

A plain under water

Two men and a project

The works of 1868-1891

New shores for the villages

Prehistory comes out of the water

From marsh to market garden

The second correction (1962-1973)

Places mentioned

Sources

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