Alpe d'Huez History
Rumor has it that Alpe D'Huez was inhabited by the Romans during their invasion of Gaul. Inhabitants were drawn to the local area because of the lucrative minerals which came easily to the surface on the abrupt slopes and deep gorges, meaning they were easily extracted by those who occupied and mined the area. The Romans are said to have mined for silver, copper, zinc and coal amongst other minerals on the slopes. The legacy of Roman industry still lives on in the names still used in resort today; Combe Charbonniere and Chave meaning: to dig.
The locals believed in a mysterious lost city at the Brande between the modern altiport and the Col de Sarenne. The silver mines were said to be guarded by ghosts armed with scythes who would chop the heads off people who wanted to explore the ruins. It was an archaeologist called Hyppolyte Muller who first braved the myths and explored the remains. They were abandoned in the 14th century when a mini ice age hit the Alps that meant that the ground could not be mined. Later on, it was his archeologist's daughter, a school teacher in Huez who introduced skiing to the slopes of the Grandes Rousses in 1911.
Before this however the forest population in the resort had been largely wiped out due to over forestation as the lumberjacks felled the trees for fuel. In 1749 the villagers won a court case to ban the felling of trees above the village in order to protect them from avalanches. Coal was therefore needed as a replacement fuel for wood and mining began once again in the area. In 1905 a cable car was installed to transport the coal as demand and supply grew to six to eight thousand tons a year. The road from Bourg d'Oisans also slowly extended up to Alpes D'Huez, forming the resort as we know it now by 1923.
By the latter part of the 1920s the resort itself began to develop when the French Touring club built a refuge in one of the alpine chalets. In 1928 the refuge opened for Christmas for the first time, with just 5 guests. Investment in the area grew with the refuge being bought by a member of parliament for the Isere department and the minister of works. They realised their dream of building a cable car to the Pic Blanc and improving the road up to Huez. Following this development was the introduction of paid holiday for workers by the Front Populaire government. It encouraged the workers to escape the grim French industrial suburbs and explore nature with their time off. More and more hotels started opening to accommodate the holiday makers.
1936 was a big year for the resort; a ski school opened and a Polish immigrant names Jean Pomagalski built the first drag lift. By 1940 he had the world wide patent on the design. The locals were allowed to use the lifts for free, however in the 1970 his lifts were bought by the SATA, but this preferential treatment was forgotten.
As with the development of all ski resorts, its progress was severely stunted by the war. However Alpe D'Huez was a centre for resistance and saw refugees, Jews, and French men escaping forced labor in Germany. Alpe D'Huez also saw a great act of humanity when in March 1944 when a detachment of German mountain troops were dispatched looking for the members of the resistance. All the men in the village were lined up and questioned. The commander Schegel showed them a paper telling them that he was under orders to execute all inhabitants and burn it to the ground. He then said that he was not going to follow these orders and left the village. Rumors reached the village that this disobedience to orders was punished by death, although he did turn up as part of the Austrian bobsleigh team in 1951.