Walterswil, Solothurn

Geschichte

Walterswil is a municipality in the district of Olten in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland.GeographyWalterswil has an area, of 4.48km2. Of this area, 2.39km2 or 53.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while 1.62km2 or 36.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 0.48km2 or 10.7% is settled (buildings or roads) and 0.02km2 or 0.4% is unproductive land.Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 4.7% and transportation infrastructure made up 4.7%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.3% of the area Out of the forested land, all of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 31.7% is used for growing crops and 19.2% is pastures, while 2.5% is used for orchards or vine crops.Coat of armsThe blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Per fess Gules and Argent a Bend counterchanged and in the second a Juniper Branch proper.DemographicsWalterswil has a population of., 5.7% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of -0.4%.Most of the population speaks German (621 or 98.3%), with French being second most common (2 or 0.3%) and English being third (2 or 0.3%)., the gender distribution of the population was 51.9% male and 48.1% female. The population was made up of 338 Swiss men (48.1% of the population) and 27 (3.8%) non-Swiss men. There were 320 Swiss women (45.5%) and 18 (2.6%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 192 or about 30.4% were born in Walterswil and lived there in 2000. There were 67 or 10.6% who were born in the same canton, while 336 or 53.2% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 30 or 4.7% were born outside of Switzerland.