Haute-Saône

Haute-Saône is divided into 2 arrondissements and 17 cantons.

The department was created in the early years of the French Revolution through the application of a law dated 22 December 1789, from part of the former province of Franche-Comté. The frontiers of the new department corresponded approximately to those of the old Bailiwick of Amont.

The department was also marked by the Franco-Prussian War with the battles of Héricourt, and Villersexel but also the proximity of the Siege of Belfort. The department welcomes Alsatians fleeing the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine.

• The Franco-Prussian war in Haute-Saône
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  Battle of the Lisaine
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  Battle of Villersexel
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  View of the destruction of Bourg de Villersexel
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  German artillery in front of the ruins of castle of Villersexel

The department has an important mining and industrial past (coal, salt, iron, lead-silver-copper mines, bituminous shale, stationery, spinning, weaving, forges, foundries, tileries, mechanical factories).

• Emblematic industries of Haute-Saône
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  Arthur de Buyer Coal Mine (1.010 m) the deepest coal mine in France between 1900 and 1910
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  Gouhenans Saltworks is one of the most important saltworks in France in the 19th century
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  Interior view of the Varigney factory (Dampierre-lès-Conflans), the iron industry was developed until the middle of the 20th century
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  Creveney bituminous shale distillation plant, a rare operation in France between the two world wars

Haute-Saône is part of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region. Neighbouring departments are Côte-d'Or to the west, Haute-Marne to the north-west, Vosges to the north, Territoire de Belfort to the east, Doubs to the south and east and Jura to south.

The department can be presented as a transitional territory positioned between several of the more depressed departments of eastern France and the so-called Blue Banana zone characterised, in recent decades by relatively powerful economic growth.

• Landscape
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  The country of Lure and the Vosges in the east of the department
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  Landscape in the southeast
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  Ray-sur-Saône in the west of the department

The department is overwhelmingly rural, despite the area having been at the forefront of industrialisation in the eighteenth century. The industrial tradition endures, but industrial businesses tend to be on a small scale. In 2006 employment by economic sector was reported as follows:[1]

* Agriculture 4,919 employees

* Construction 4,504 employees

* Industrial sector 18,747 employees

* Service sector 44,865 employees

Population Changes between 1872 and 2005 (source:INSEE). The baseline on this graph is set at 200,000 people, and the increments represented by the horizontal grid lines are of 10,000.

In common with many rural departments in France, Haute-Saône has experienced a savage reduction in population, from nearly 350,000 in the middle of the nineteenth century to barely 200,000 on the eve of the Second World War, as people migrated to newly industrialising population centres, often outside Metropolitan France.

During the second half of the twentieth century the mass mobility conferred by the surge in automobile ownership permitted some recovery of the population figure to approximately 234,000 in 2004.

The rural nature of the department is highlighted by the absence of large towns and cities. Even the department's capital, Vesoul, still had a population below 20,000 in 2010.

• 
  Notre-Dame du Haut by Le Corbusier (UNESCO)
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  Château d'Oricourt
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  Pesmes
• 
  La Planche des Belles Filles (Tour de France)
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  Landcap of Plateau des Mille Étangs

• County of Burgundy - History
• Franche-Comté
• Cantons of the Haute-Saône department
• Communes of the Haute-Saône department
• Arrondissements of the Haute-Saône department
• Arpitan language

• (in French) Prefecture website
• (in French) General Council website
• (in French) Tourism website