Champagnole
Encyclopedia
Champagnole is a commune
in the Jura department in Franche-Comté
in eastern France
.
at the foot of Mont Rivel (800m). It is around 130 km north east of Lyon
, around 90 km south east of Dijon
, and around 60 km north of Geneva
.
and of its derivatives supplies the raw material
s for furniture
factories, including bathroom furniture. There is also a craft trade in box-making, wooden utensils and toys.
The presence of the Ain is the source of other industries at Champagnole: mill
s, iron
and steel
working, including specialist steel
s and drawing wire
to special sections. The Forge
s de Syam, which are classed as an historic monument, are a proud representative of this metalworking
tradition. A less obvious connection with the river lies in the aluminium
foundry
-work done at Champagnole but a speciality in this field usually goes with a supply of relatively cheap, hydroelectricity
, a product of the Ain since the early 20th century. There are also printing
works, plastic
injection moulding
factories, micro-mechanical workshops and optical
laboratories producing spectacles.
Its food specialities are charcuterie or pork butchery, represented by fumé du Jura (smoked Jura ham); Comté (a cow’s milk cheese) or goat cheese, other milk
products and honey
(from spruce
and from flowers).
, here iron-working began before the use of coal for the purpose was practical. The forest was needed to provide charcoal
. The river in its steep bed provided power. There was plenty of limestone
for smelting
flux
and some ferruginous limestone, though how useful that will have been as ore
is not clear. (Compare Red Mountain, Birmingham, Alabama
). Another consideration is the fact that Champagnole is so to speak, just over the hill from La Tène
, the centre of late Iron Age
culture. See La Tène culture
.
Communes of France
The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...
in the Jura department in Franche-Comté
Franche-Comté
Franche-Comté the former "Free County" of Burgundy, as distinct from the neighbouring Duchy, is an administrative region and a traditional province of eastern France...
in eastern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Geography
Champagnole has the publicity tag of "Pearl of the Jura" and is a small town at the geographical centre of Jura tourism. It stands on the right bank of the young River AinAin River
The Ain is a river in eastern France. In the Franco-Provençal language it is known as the En.-Global position:The river rises at an altitude of some 700 metres, near the village of La Favière, in the Jurassic limestone of the southern end of the Jura mountains and flows into the Rhône about 40...
at the foot of Mont Rivel (800m). It is around 130 km north east of Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, around 90 km south east of Dijon
Dijon
Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....
, and around 60 km north of Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
.
Economy
Champagnole’s economic activity is principally industrial. The town is surrounded by blocks of forest so the exploitation of the timberTimber
Timber may refer to:* Timber, a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for wood materials * Timber, Oregon, an unincorporated community in the U.S...
and of its derivatives supplies the raw material
Raw material
A raw material or feedstock is the basic material from which a product is manufactured or made, frequently used with an extended meaning. For example, the term is used to denote material that came from nature and is in an unprocessed or minimally processed state. Latex, iron ore, logs, and crude...
s for furniture
Furniture
Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...
factories, including bathroom furniture. There is also a craft trade in box-making, wooden utensils and toys.
The presence of the Ain is the source of other industries at Champagnole: mill
Watermill
A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping .- History :...
s, iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
and steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
working, including specialist steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
s and drawing wire
Wire drawing
Wire drawing is a metalworking process used to reduce the cross-section of a wire by pulling the wire through a single, or series of, drawing die. There are many applications for wire drawing, including electrical wiring, cables, tension-loaded structural components, springs, paper clips, spokes...
to special sections. The Forge
Forge
A forge is a hearth used for forging. The term "forge" can also refer to the workplace of a smith or a blacksmith, although the term smithy is then more commonly used.The basic smithy contains a forge, also known as a hearth, for heating metals...
s de Syam, which are classed as an historic monument, are a proud representative of this metalworking
Metalworking
Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills,...
tradition. A less obvious connection with the river lies in the aluminium
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....
foundry
Foundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron...
-work done at Champagnole but a speciality in this field usually goes with a supply of relatively cheap, hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity is the term referring to electricity generated by hydropower; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy...
, a product of the Ain since the early 20th century. There are also printing
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
works, plastic
Plastic
A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...
injection moulding
Injection moulding
Injection molding is a manufacturing process for producing parts from both thermoplastic and thermosetting plastic materials. Material is fed into a heated barrel, mixed, and forced into a mold cavity where it cools and hardens to the configuration of the cavity...
factories, micro-mechanical workshops and optical
Optics
Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...
laboratories producing spectacles.
Its food specialities are charcuterie or pork butchery, represented by fumé du Jura (smoked Jura ham); Comté (a cow’s milk cheese) or goat cheese, other milk
Milk
Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...
products and honey
Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
(from spruce
Spruce
A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea , a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the Family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal regions of the earth. Spruces are large trees, from tall when mature, and can be distinguished by their whorled branches and conical...
and from flowers).
History
The modern economy of the town is based on the economic assets of the region historically. Though it is normal to think of steel works in connection with extensive, flat sites and the proximity of coalCoal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
, here iron-working began before the use of coal for the purpose was practical. The forest was needed to provide charcoal
Charcoal
Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...
. The river in its steep bed provided power. There was plenty of limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
for smelting
Smelting
Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...
flux
Flux
In the various subfields of physics, there exist two common usages of the term flux, both with rigorous mathematical frameworks.* In the study of transport phenomena , flux is defined as flow per unit area, where flow is the movement of some quantity per time...
and some ferruginous limestone, though how useful that will have been as ore
Ore
An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....
is not clear. (Compare Red Mountain, Birmingham, Alabama
Red Mountain, Birmingham, Alabama
Red Mountain is a long ridge running southwest-northeast and dividing Jones Valley from Shades Valley south of Birmingham, Alabama. It is part of the Ridge-and-Valley region of the Appalachian mountains...
). Another consideration is the fact that Champagnole is so to speak, just over the hill from La Tène
La Tène, Neuchâtel
La Tène is a municipality in the district of Neuchâtel in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel.On 1 January 2009, the former municipalities of Marin-Epagnier and Thielle-Wavre merged to form the new municipality of La Tène....
, the centre of late Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
culture. See La Tène culture
La Tène culture
The La Tène culture was a European Iron Age culture named after the archaeological site of La Tène on the north side of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where a rich cache of artifacts was discovered by Hansli Kopp in 1857....
.
Administration
| mandate | Name | Party | background |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2001 | Jean Charoppin | ||
| 'Earlier data are not yet available. | |||
Demography
Its inhabitants are known as Champagnolais.Monuments and tourism sites
- Gateway to the high Jura and to the land of the Jura lakes, Champagnole is a floral town featuring the "Parc de Belle Frise". The Ain passes below the lower edge of the park. On its bank are walks. Champagnole is a sporting town with all types of sports club including rugbyRugby footballRugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...
, footballFootball (soccer)Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
, tennisTennisTennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
, baseballBaseballBaseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, pétanquePétanquePétanque is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet or jack. It is also sometimes called a bouchon or le petit...
and handballTeam handballHandball is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each pass a ball to throw it into the goal of the other team...
. - In the same way, Champagnole is the gateway to the Route des Sapins (the Pine Road), which in forty kilometres, crosses the forests of the Frese, the Joux and of Levier, named after the commune where the route ends.
- The Forges de SyamForges de SyamThe Forges de Syam are forge works and sheet metal mills which are still active in 2005, although the buildings were erected in the 19th century and part of the machinery from that time is still in use...
form part both of the history of Champagnole's industry and of its present. There are signs that it may be set for the future too.
See also
- Jura (département)
- Jura mountainsJura mountainsThe Jura Mountains are a small mountain range located north of the Alps, separating the Rhine and Rhone rivers and forming part of the watershed of each...
- Lac de VouglansLac de VouglansThe Lac de Vouglans is the reservoir of the hydro-electric power station at Vouglans on the River Ain in the département of Jura in the region of Franche-Comté in eastern France. The dam, the Barrage de Vouglans is at coordinates .-Description:...
- Communes of the Jura department
Twin towns
- Gottmadingen (Germany) in German
- DukinfieldDukinfieldDukinfield is a small town within the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies in central Tameside on the south bank of the River Tame, opposite Ashton-under-Lyne, and is east of the city of Manchester...
, England, twinned since 1958