Boguszów-Gorce
Boguszów-Gorce is a town in Wałbrzych County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. As of June 2021, it has a population of 15,085.
Geography
It lies on the border between the Wałbrzych Mountains and the Stone Mountains in the Central Sudetes.History
Boguszów was granted town rights by King Vladislaus II in 1499. It was a mining town, and in 1502 Vladislaus II relinquished to the town a quarter of the tithe owed to him from the town's silver mines. In the 16th century, the town became the most important lead and silver ore mining center in the Sudeten part of Silesia, but by the end of the 16th century much of the deposits had been exploited, and then eventually local mining collapsed during the Thirty Years' War. Local mines supplied silver to the mints in Wrocław and Złoty Stok. A new mining company was founded in 1701, which, however, did not revive local mining. In the late 18th century, bituminous coal and baryte mining began on a larger scale.During World War I, the Germans operated a forced labour camp for Allied prisoners of war in the town. During World War II, the Germans operated a forced labour subcamp of the Stalag VIII-A prisoner-of-war camp at a coal mine in Kuźnice Świdnickie.
In the interwar period and the 1950s, the villages of Sobięcin Górny, Koło, Lubominek and Stary Lesieniec were included within the town limits of Boguszów. In 1962, Gorce was granted town rights. Boguszów-Gorce was established in 1973 from the merger of the towns of Boguszów and Gorce and the village of Kuźnice Świdnickie.
In 2016, a hoard of 1,385 late medieval coins, Prague groschen of Kings Charles IV and Wenceslaus IV, was found on the border of Boguszów-Gorce and Wałbrzych. The hoard may have been hidden after 1420 during the Hussite Wars. It is one of the largest groschen hoards found in Poland.