Bussang
Bussang is a French mountain commune located in the Vosges department, in the Grand Est region. It is the highest commune in the Upper Moselle valley, where the river originates. It is part of the Vosges mountain range.
Its inhabitants are called the Bussenets.
Geography
Located at the southeastern edge of the former Lorraine region, bordering Alsace, the commune of Bussang is the source of the Moselle River and stretches lengthwise along the valley of its young source. It is one of the 201 communes within the Ballons des Vosges Nature Park, spread across four departments: Vosges, Haut-Rhin, Territoire de Belfort, and Haute-Saône. The area is particularly mountainous, boasting numerous peaks and streams. Several hamlets are scattered within its boundaries, including Taye and La Hutte upstream to the east, as well as the village resort of Larcenaire and Plain de la Bouloie.Remiremont is 34 km away and Thann 26 km away via the Bussang Pass. A small road leads directly to Ventron via the Page pass.
Geology and relief
The village center is situated at an altitude of 600 meters. The commune thus occupies the highest point in the Upper Moselle Valley and is surrounded by more than fourteen peaks exceeding 1,000 meters in altitude. The four highest peaks, located to the east, mark the border with Alsace. These four peaks are Tête des Neufs-Bois, Tête de Fellering, Drumont, and Tête des Russiers.Although it is the third highest peak in the commune, Drumont is the best known thanks to its alpine pasture and its magnificent panorama of the High Vosges Mountains at the crossroads of two major glacial valleys, the Upper Moselle and the Thur. Tête des Neufs-Bois is the highest and most imposing peak. It overlooks the upper Séchenat Valley, and its northeast-facing slopes, among the steepest in the Vosges Mountains, are of great interest for off-piste skiing. It is bordered by the Large Tête and the Haut de Taye to the west, and the Tête des Allemands to the north. More than six mountain streams cascade down the slopes of this valley. Descending the Haut de Taye ridge, one finds the Broche and the statue of Saint Barbara, which offers a view of the village and the Moselle Valley.
In the same area, but on the other side of the young Moselle River to the north, lies the Drumont massif and the upper Hutte Valley. This area is also high-altitude, situated in the montane and subalpine zones. The area alone includes six peaks over 1,000 m: Drumont, Tête de Fellering, Tête des Russiers, and Hasenkopf, as well as, to the north, Haut de Brampas and Tête de Meusfoux. The latter overlooks the Hutte valley and its hamlet, located below at an altitude of 655 m. Haut de Brampas is also the northernmost peak in the commune. In this same area are Haut du Charat and two passes on either side of Meusfoux: Col du Collet to the west and Col du Page to the east, both leading to the commune of Ventron.
Further west, beyond the Collet pass, lies the Haut de la Croix de l'Ermite, reaching an altitude of 1,065 m. The summit takes its name from the hermit Pierre-Joseph Formet, known as Brother Joseph, who lived near Ventron. Continuing west, one finds the Haut de Rochelotte and the eponymous pass, followed by the Tête des Corbeaux at 1,094 m. The Larcenaire ski resort is located at the foot of these two peaks on a plateau at an altitude of 830 m. Further south, one finds the Tête des Révolles and its two antennas at 965 m; this is the summit closest to the village center. At the western edge of the commune, the altitude decreases, and one finds the last two peaks: Haut des Sauvages and Berhamont. On the other side of the Moselle River rises the last part of the Bussang mountain range, which includes the Haut de la Rocholle and then the Tête de la Bouloie.
Downhill skiing is practiced at Larcenaire and cross-country skiing at Rochelotte. The La Bouloie ski resort has been closed since 2010.
Hydrography and groundwater
The commune is located in the Rhine watershed within the Rhine-Meuse basin. It is drained by the Moselle River, the Hutte stream, the Lamerey stream, the Noiregoutte stream, and the Sechenat stream. The Bussang territory is dotted with small secondary valleys carved by numerous streams, called "gouttes" in the local mountain dialect, including the four main ones already mentioned: the Sechenat, Hutte, Lamerey, and Noiregoutte streams. Among their tributaries are the Goutte Devant, Page, Saint-Louis, and Drumont streams, as well as many others that are not named.The Moselle River, with a total length of 560 kilometers, 315 kilometers of which are in France, rises within the commune's territory at the Bussang Pass and flows into the Rhine at Koblenz in Germany.
The Menil and Sechenat streams.
Hydrogeology and climatology: Information system for groundwater management in the Rhine-Meuse basin:
Climate
In 2010, Bussang's climate was classified as mountain, according to a study by the French National Centre for Scientific Research based on data covering the period 1971-2000. In 2020, Météo-France published a typology of metropolitan France's climates, in which the municipality is classified as having a semi-continental climate and is located in the Vosges climate region, characterized by very high rainfall in all seasons and harsh winters.For the period 1971-2000, the average annual temperature was 8.6°C, with an annual temperature range of 16.7°C. The average annual rainfall was 1,859 mm, with 14.3 days of precipitation in January and 11.3 days in July. For the period 1991-2020, the average annual temperature observed at the nearest Météo-France weather station, "Sewen - Lac Alfeld_sapc," located in the commune of Sewen 9 km away as the crow flies, was 10.0 °C, and the average annual rainfall was 2,282.3 mm. The maximum temperature recorded at this station was 37.2 °C, reached on July 24, 2019; the minimum temperature was -21 °C, reached on January 12, 1987.
The commune's climate parameters were estimated for the middle of the century according to different greenhouse gas emission scenarios based on the new DRIAS-2020 reference climate projections. These projections can be viewed on a dedicated website published by Météo-France in November 2022.
Urban planning
Typology
As of January 1, 2024, Bussang is categorized as a rural commune with dispersed housing, according to the new seven-level municipal density scale defined by INSEE in 2022. It belongs to the Thillot urban unit, an intra-departmental agglomeration comprising eight communes, of which it is a suburban commune. Furthermore, the commune is outside the influence of any city.Land use
Land cover in Bussang, as shown in the European biophysical land cover database Corine Land Cover, is characterized by the significant presence of forests and semi-natural areas, a decrease compared to 1990. The detailed breakdown in 2018 is as follows: forests, grasslands, shrub and/or herbaceous vegetation, heterogeneous agricultural areas, and urbanized areas. Changes in land cover and infrastructure within the municipality can be observed on various maps of the territory: the Cassini map, the General Staff map, and IGN maps and aerial photographs for the current period.The commune benefits from the local urban development plan, the latest procedure of which was approved on March 13, 2015.
Natural and technological risks
Seismicity
Bussang is located in an area of moderate seismicity.Name
From a Germanic personal name, Bosso or Busso, followed by the suffix -ingen, Francization to -ang: "Bosso's Estate."Buzant, Bussang, Bussanc, Bussain, Bussan, Bussans, Buyssant, Busans, Bossan, Bussanum. In German: Büssing.
In the 19th century, Bussang was also known postally as Biltzenbach.
History
The upper Moselle valley was traversed by the Roman road linking Metz to Basel. Bussang and Saint-Maurice-sur-Moselle were united under the name Visentine until 1420, a name the parish retained until its division in 1767.The Engelbourg castle, residence of the Counts of Ferrette and later the Habsburgs, controlled the trade route over the Bussang Pass.
In February 1856, nuns from the Saint-Esprit convent in Rouceux, who had come to respond to a cholera epidemic, founded a hospice to care for the elderly and orphans.
The town's development was based successively on the exploitation of relatively modest lead, copper, and silver mines, mineral springs, and then the textile industry. Benjamin Pottecher, an industrialist specializing in the manufacture of cutlery and mayor of the locality, was one of the first in France to implement the eight-hour day.
Projects to tunnel through the Southern Vosges
The failure of projects to open up the southern Vosges region was initially a consequence of the political and strategic precautions imposed by the 1871 border. With the end of the First World War, numerous and well-reasoned proposals for tunneling through the Vosges emerged, each with its own distinct approach, but no decision has yet been made regarding a tunnel through the southern Vosges aimed at revitalizing activity on both sides of the mountain range. During this turbulent political period in Europe, a completely unexpected counter-proposal appeared in 1913: it proposed passing under the Ballon d'Alsace, some distance from Bussang, to connect Saint-Maurice-sur-Moselle or Le Thillot to Giromagny in the Territoire de Belfort. Construction began on a tunnel at Bussang, intended to link Saint-Maurice-sur-Moselle and Wesserling and help open up the upper Moselle valley, but it was never completed.And while, further north, the Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines tunnel—the Maurice-Lemaire tunnel—now converted into a road tunnel and brought up to European standards, connects the upper Meurthe valley with Alsace; This opens up real prospects for interregional and cross-border development, linking Saint-Dié-des-Vosges to Sélestat. The breakthrough through the southern Vosges has been awaited since… 1909.
In a pamphlet published in 1909, the Pinot-Pottecher committee had indeed endeavored to highlight the advantages of the Bussang tunnel project and the drawbacks of the two other southern Vosges projects, leaving aside the projects further north at Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and Saales, which it considered to be outside its purview. It summarized its conclusions as follows: “We believe we have sufficiently demonstrated the great benefit of giving preference to the Bussang-Kruth breakthrough project.”