Saint-Gingolph (Valais)

Geschichte

Saint-Gingolph is a municipality in the district of Monthey in the canton of Valais in Switzerland.The municipality is the Swiss portion of the town of Saint-Gingolph, which straddles the Swiss-French border provided by the Morge river. The French (western) side of the town is known as Saint-Gingolph, Haute-Savoie.HistorySaint-Gingolph is first mentioned in 1153 as ''Sanctus GengulfusGeographySaint-Gingolph has an area, of 14.4km2. Of this area, 1.61km2 or 11.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while 8.77km2 or 61.0% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 0.66km2 or 4.6% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.06km2 or 0.4% is either rivers or lakes and 3.27km2 or 22.7% is unproductive land.Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 2.5% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.6%. Out of the forested land, 55.8% of the total land area is heavily forested and 3.3% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 0.0% is used for growing crops and 2.1% is pastures and 8.8% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is in lakes. Of the unproductive areas, 13.7% is unproductive vegetation and 9.0% is too rocky for vegetation.The municipality is located in the Monthey district, along the La Morge stream. The municipality straddles the French border. Before 1569, Saint-Gingolph, the hamlet of Le Freney and the Haute-Savoie village of Saint-Gingolph formed a single municipality.