History of the villages of the Val-de-Travers region (Neuchâtel)
The 20 documented localities of the Val-de-Travers region, in the canton of Neuchâtel. Each page covers the origin of the name, the main stages of its history and its remains, with sources.
Towns and villages 16
Boveresse
A crossroads village in the Val-de-Travers where the plants for absinthe were grown, and whose drying shed of 1893 is now a museum.
NEButtes
At the head of the Val-de-Travers, Buttes was a staging post on the Vy Saulnier, the salt road, and from the 15th to the 19th century a nursery of masons and carpenters.
NECouvet
A staging post on the old road to France, Couvet was the birthplace of the watchmaker Ferdinand Berthoud and, in 1867, of the Dubied knitting machine factory.
NEFleurier
A farming village at the confluence of three streams, Fleurier became a centre of watchmaking and lace in the 19th century. Charles-Edouard Guillaume, Nobel laureate in 1920, was born here.
NELa Côte-aux-Fées
Birthplace of the Piaget watch manufactory, La Côte-aux-Fées probably owes its name not to fairies: « La Costa des Faies » would be the « slope of the ewes ».
NELes Bayards
Near the hamlet of Haut de la Tour an iron chain barred the Chaîne pass, which the vanguard of Charles the Bold tried in vain to force in 1476.
NELes Bolles-du-Temple
The main hamlet of La Côte-aux-Fées, Les Bolles-du-Temple brings together the temple opened in 1875, the municipal administration and the manufacture of the Piaget firm, founded in 1874.
NELes Verrières
Border street village of the Val-de-Travers, on the old road to France, where the Bourbaki army was interned in Switzerland in February 1871.
NEMeudon
Around a church recorded in 1324, whose present building went up in 1517, Meudon was one of the bourgeaux of the long street village of Les Verrières, near the French border.
NEMonlési
Abram de Pury named it « Mon Lési », « Mon Loisir »: the house where he received relatives and friends in summer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau among them.
NEMôtiers
Grown up around the priory of Saint-Pierre, Môtiers took in Jean-Jacques Rousseau from 1762 to 1765 and became the capital of the Val-de-Travers district in 1848.
NENoiraigue
From 1858 to 1882 the Combe-Varin estate at Noiraigue, the village of the « black water », owned by the naturalist Édouard Desor, was an international meeting place for scientists.
NERosières
Three times, from the 17th to the 19th century, this hamlet of Noiraigue was made a lordship, always dependent on Travers. Its lords ended up bearing the name Sandoz-Rosières.
NESaint-Sulpice
A village near the source of the Areuse, whose water has driven mills, sawmills and forges since the Middle Ages, then a paper mill opened in 1677 and a cement works.
NETravers
From 1712 to 1986 La Presta yielded asphalt from a deposit described as the largest in Europe. In 1850 Travers became the first Neuchâtel municipality to set up a republican-style council.
NE · Merger 2009Val-de-Travers
Nine of the eleven communes of the Val-de-Travers joined on 1 January 2009, after a first project failed in 2007.
Sites 4
La Robella
Above Buttes, on the northern slope of the Chasseron, the La Robella plateau became a ski resort at the end of the 1960s. A summer toboggan run was built there in 2004.
NE · SiteMines d'asphalte de La Presta
Asphalt mine in the Val-de-Travers worked from 1712 to 1986, with galleries totalling about 100 km. Part of it has been open to visitors since 1987.
NE · SitePrieuré Saint-Pierre de Môtiers
Probably founded between 909 and 1032, the priory of Saint-Pierre at Môtiers was secularised in 1537. A sparkling-wine business moved into its buildings in 1829.
NE · SiteSource de l'Areuse
Vauclusian spring of the Areuse at La Doux, near Saint-Sulpice, in the municipality of Val-de-Travers (former municipality of Saint-Sulpice), cradle of a long history of water power.