The Pays-d'Enhaut through time

Cluny was a great abbey in Burgundy, and Rougemont was one of its smallest houses. The monks of Cluny reached Britain at about the same time. William and Gundrada de Warenne founded the first Cluniac house there, at Lewes, between 1078 and 1082.

Scotland's first came in about 1163, when Walter FitzAlan founded Paisley Abbey with thirteen monks sent from Much Wenlock. Scotland only ever had one other Cluniac house, Crossraguel in Ayrshire, which was a daughter house of Paisley.

The counts later ran short of money, and their people began to buy back the charges they owed. Saanen, next door, did so step by step between 1312 and 1448. Rougemont was freed from the count's death-duty in 1398, and from the prior's in 1456.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Gruyère, de”, “Saanen (bailliage)” and “Rougemont (commune)”; Lewes Priory Trust; Paisley Abbey, “History”; Historic Environment Scotland, “Crossraguel Abbey”

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland gives the earliest form of the name as Rubeus Mons, in 1115. The canton's official gazette follows it through the next century and a half: Rubeo monte and Rogo mons in 1228, then Rojomont in 1270. The old German name was Retschmund.

The gazette explains that the name comes from layers of red flysch, a kind of rock, on the slopes north of the village. The commune's own history says the same. Ric Berger, who wrote on the place names of the Vaud Alps in 1993, puts the red layers on the Rodomont, the hill above the village. He thinks the name came down from the hill to the houses below.

The commune's arms show a silver crane on a red ground, standing on a green mount with two peaks. Every commune of the upper and lower Gruyère carries a crane. The two hills are the Rubly and the Rodomont, one on each side of the village.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Rougemont (commune)”; Feuille des avis officiels du canton de Vaud, “Alphabet des communes: Rougemont”; Ric Berger, Les Alpes vaudoises (1993)

The humanist Gessner, writing in 1555, says that the herdsmen would let nobody go up to the lake without a citizen to vouch for the council's permission. They swore an oath every year to keep to the rule. The monk locked up in 1387 was Niklaus Bruder, according to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.

In 1585 the town priest, Johannes Müller, went up with councillors and herdsmen to show in public that the story was nonsense. In 1594 the government declared the legend mere superstition and ordered the lake to be drained.

Sources. Hans Amann, “Humanisten als Pioniere am Pilatus”, Die Alpen (1983); HLS, “Alpinismus”; P. X. Weber, Swiss Alpine Club (1913)

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland explains where these courts came from. At the Reformation, pastors and rulers wanted something to replace the bishop's court, which had judged marriage cases. Very soon the new courts were also making sure that parishioners kept the laws on morals. Bern followed the model of the Zurich reformer Zwingli in 1528. Its members were local notables, and everywhere, the Dictionary says, informing was encouraged.

In this valley the first court sat at Château-d'Œx in 1557 or 1558, and Rougemont had one soon after. The charges the Dictionary lists are breaking the Sabbath, drunkenness, dancing, loose living and adultery. The valley's own history of 1883 remembers that “Peu suffisait pour être dénoncé et condamné” (it took little to be reported and convicted). One of its cases is D. Martin, a miller, convicted “pour avoir fait jouer la scie à eau, un dimanche”, for running his water-saw on a Sunday.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Consistoires”; Pierre-Yves Favez, “La Réforme au Pays-d'Enhaut” (1986); Club du Rubly, Château-d'Œx et le Pays d'Enhaut vaudois (1883); ScotlandsPeople / Your Scottish Archives, on kirk sessions

Michel of Gruyère spent his youth at the court of King Francis I of France. Even after he became count, he served several times as a troop commander or a diplomat, for the King of France or for the Emperor Charles V.

When his money ran out, neither the King nor the Emperor came to his help. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says that he struck his own coins and tried to grow rich with the help of alchemists. He died in Burgundy in February 1575, the last of his family, “délaissé de tous”, abandoned by everyone.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Gruyère, Michel de”; Sammlung Schweizerischer Rechtsquellen, Fribourg (1939)

Bern and Fribourg paid off the count's other creditors first. Nobody in Bern wanted the post of bailiff. The historian Pierre-Yves Favez quotes the old chronicle of Rougemont on why. It was “à cause non seulement de la rusticité de ce peuple” (not only because of the roughness of this people). The chronicle goes on, “mais semblant qu'il estoit imbu d'idolâtrie” (but because it seemed steeped in idolatry).

The priory was abolished by decree on 19 December 1555. The second choice, Jean-Rodolphe de Graffenried, arrived the next day. He governed “avec patience, douceur et prudence” (with patience, gentleness and prudence). The bailiff was judge, tax collector and military commander. From 1575 he lived here, in the old priory, which had been turned into a château.

Sources. Pierre-Yves Favez, “La Réforme au Pays-d'Enhaut” (1986); Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Rougemont (commune)” and “Bailli”

The chronicle says that the priests fled with them. The historian Pierre-Yves Favez describes what followed in the valley. There were “autels dérochés, croix abattues, statues brûlées auprès des églises” (altars torn down, crosses thrown down, statues burned beside the churches).

Favez takes the cost at Rougemont from Monique Fontannaz. He quotes her: “pour encourager le zèle iconoclaste, le bailli eut à dépenser quelques florins” (to encourage the image-breakers' zeal, the bailiff had to spend a few florins). They went “en main-d'œuvre et en collations dans les auberges” (on labour and on refreshments in the inns).

Resistance was punished with fines and prison. By December 1557, 247 people of the bailiwick had been convicted. There were so many that Bern halved the fines.

Sources. Pierre-Yves Favez, “La Réforme au Pays-d'Enhaut” (1986), quoting Monique Fontannaz, L'église et le château de Rougemont

The reason lay in what the Reformers believed. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland explains that Protestant teaching “rejetait notamment le purgatoire et les prières d'intercession pour les morts” (rejected, in particular, purgatory and prayers of intercession for the dead). Most of the old funeral rites disappeared as a result.

In Reformed lands the church kept only a prayer after the burial, and the death was announced after the Sunday sermon. A representative of the lay authorities, such as the head of a guild, might give a funeral speech. Some lay customs survived, the Dictionary says, among them the procession, the wake and the funeral meal. Bern's ordinance kept the meal, for the family only.

Sources. HLS, “Rites funéraires”; Pierre-Yves Favez, “La Réforme au Pays-d'Enhaut” (1986), p. 59

The valley's history of 1883 counts the losses. The fire of 1600 burned 10 houses, 11 barns and 8 granaries. In 1776 it was 10 houses and 5 barns, a loss of 25,410 florins. In 1855 it was 18 houses and 6 barns, a loss of 20,000 francs.

Sources. Club du Rubly, Château-d'Œx et le Pays d'Enhaut vaudois (1883), p. 174

The tourist office's guide describes the main street. “One of the two houses here dates from 1623, and this is one of the oldest dates that can be seen in the village now. The house next door, though, seems to date from the 16th century … There are older buildings in Rougemont, but they have not yet been dated.”

Many houses also have two matching staircases, one on each side. They were built for two households of the same family, and La Maison du Cordier is the guide's example. Timber houses could even be taken down and put up again elsewhere. Les Clématites carries the words “moved in the year of our Lord 1647”.

Over these two centuries, the seventeenth and eighteenth, the valley gave up growing grain almost completely and turned to cattle and hard cheese.

Sources. Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, A Living History (2018), the Rougemont trail; Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Pays-d'Enhaut”

The account comes from a manuscript by the pastor, Jean Pierre Secrétan, quoted in the valley's history of 1883. The storm blew for two days and two nights, and it also brought down the spire of the church at Château-d'Œx.

The church was rebuilt and made larger. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland dates the enlargement to 1645. In 1680 another storm carried off the orb and cross, and the tower was then raised to its present height.

Sources. Club du Rubly, Château-d'Œx et le Pays d'Enhaut vaudois (1883), pp. 172–173, quoting J. P. Secrétan's manuscript; HLS, “Rossinière”

The tourist office's guide says of La Cotze: “This building has a remarkable diversity of beautiful decoration on its facade. Some have disappeared over time, while others have reappeared, such as the Bernese bears which were painted over in 1798 when the Pays-d'Enhaut rejoined the canton of Vaud.”

The guide explains the colour as well: “The ochre colour is believed to have been introduced by Italians, as a means of preventing woodworm.” It calls Saugy “another of the talented local découpage artists”.

Sources. Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, A Living History (2018), pp. 30–31

The rule had been drafted in 1673 by the bailiff Albert Frichtin. A panel in the Château-d'Œx museum quotes it: “Les parents doivent envoyer leurs enfants à l'école. Ils peuvent y être contraints par le consistoire” (parents must send their children to school; the consistory, the parish court that watched over morals, can force them). The Château-d'Œx rule for the schoolmaster set the order of his lessons. “Le maître d'école devra principalement instruire ses escholiers en la piété chrétienne” (the schoolmaster shall teach his pupils first Christian piety). Then came “secondement aux bonnes lettres, tiercement aux bonnes mœurs” (second good letters, third good manners).

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says that the Reformation and the Catholic Reformation both renewed the schools. The aim was “une meilleure connaissance de la Bible et du catéchisme” (a better knowledge of the Bible and the catechism). In Bern's lands, it says, “toutes les communes durent introduire un enseignement scolaire en 1615” (every commune had to introduce schooling in 1615).

In Catholic Fribourg, the bishop and the state agreed in 1749 on a school in every commune or parish. By 1798 only the towns, market towns and rich communes had one. The dictionary adds that “les masses rurales semblent encore en majorité analphabètes” (most country people still seem to have been unable to read). It says that reading spread faster in Protestant regions than in Catholic ones, but that the gap was closing before the end of the eighteenth century.

England had no national system of schools before the nineteenth century. Around 1700 about 40 per cent of English men and 25 per cent of English women could sign their name. The Education Act of 1880 made attendance compulsory from the age of five to ten.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), 'Instruction publique' and 'Consistoires'; Musée du Vieux Pays-d'Enhaut, school panel; Club du Rubly, Château-d'Œx et le Pays d'Enhaut vaudois, 1883; Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), 'Fribourg (canton)' and 'Instruction publique'; UK Parliament, Living Heritage; D. Mitch, Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain (2004)

The tourist office's guide says the store was “originally full of cereals and food supplies”. Families also kept “their bed linen and their valuables, which is why it has such formidable locks”. It stood apart “to protect its contents in case of fire”.

The valley's historians of 1883 list what the stores held: “blé, viande salée, pain de pommes de terre, ou gâtelet” (grain, salt meat, and potato bread or gâtelet). The bread was baked in autumn to last the winter. The guide calls the Latin inscription on the front “the only such carving in the region”.

Sources. Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, A Living History (2018); Club du Rubly, Château-d'Œx et le Pays d'Enhaut vaudois, 1883

Hofer was born in Mulhouse and was 19 years old. His dissertation was titled Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, oder Heimwehe. Heimweh is the German word for homesickness.

He made the new word from the Greek nostos, the return home, and algos, pain. He had seen the illness in Swiss students abroad too. Besides losing their appetite and running fevers, the sufferers had racing hearts, and in the worst cases they died.

Sources. J. Hofer, Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, oder Heimwehe (Basel, 1688); Hektoen International, 'A medical and cultural history of nostalgia' (2025)

The house takes its name from the arolle, the Swiss stone pine. In 1910 the commune built a new school of stone, set apart from the old wooden village. The plans were by a Lausanne architect, Ch. Borgeaud.

Half a century later the village had a school of a very different kind. In May 1961 the Institut Alpin Videmanette advertised in the Tatler for “Girls 16-20”. It offered “First-class ski-ing, Languages, Domestic Science, Secretarial Course”, with a prospectus from an agent in Guildford, Surrey.

Sources. Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, A Living History (2018); Commune de Rougemont, “L'histoire de Rougemont”; Le Progrès de Château-d'Œx, 19 January 1910; The Tatler, 24 May 1961

The carpenters carved the date at the top of the front, and the tourist office's guide gives it as 1705. That makes the house a generation older than the journey of Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole.

In 1739 the two young men set out on the Grand Tour. For wealthy young men this journey through Europe was a rite of passage. They were going for the art of Rome, and the Alps were only the obstacle in between. On the way, a wolf carried off Walpole's spaniel.

Writing to a friend from Turin, Gray described the crossing: “Mont Cenis, I confess, carries the permission mountains have of being frightful rather too far; and its horrors were accompanied with too much danger to give one time to reflect upon their beauties.”

The earliest English traveller known to have written about this valley is John Cam Hobhouse, in 1816. That was more than a century after these beams were cut.

Sources. Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, A Living History (2018); Thomas Gray, letter from Turin, 1739, as given in “The English experience of the Alps”

The tourist office's heritage guide says the building still has a carving on the side, although several restorations have changed it since 1709.

In 1960 the canton put the building's façades and roof on its list of historic monuments. That list names the master builder as “le charpentier Anthoine Amstutz, du Gessenay” (the carpenter Anthoine Amstutz, of Saanen). It also praises the building's “si belles frises” (such fine friezes).

Sources. Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, A Living History (2018); list of historic monuments, Journal de Château-d'Œx, 1 July 1960

The battle was fought on 11 September 1709, about 15 kilometres south of Mons, in what was then the Spanish Netherlands. The place is now Taisnières-sur-Hon, in the Nord department of France. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland calls it a “journée décisive”, a decisive day, in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1702 to 1714. The allies were led by the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene.

“Des troupes suisses se trouvaient dans les deux camps”, the Dictionary says: Swiss troops were on both sides. Two of the regiments belonged to two Bernese men named May. Gabriel von May served Holland, and Hans Rudolf von May served France. The treaties under which Swiss regiments served abroad, called capitulations, forbade anyone “de faire combattre des Suisses contre leurs compatriotes”, to make Swiss fight their own countrymen.

Swiss losses came to about 8,000 men, and the clash was held to be a disgrace. The Diet, the assembly of the cantons, took steps, and Swiss did not fight Swiss again until the battle of Bailén in 1808.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Malplaquet, bataille de” (Hervé de Weck) and “Service étranger”

Scheuchzer had close ties with England, and the Royal Society in London supported him. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland links that support to “les débuts du tourisme anglais dans les Alpes” (the beginnings of English tourism in the Alps).

Sources. HLS, “Scheuchzer, Johann Jakob”

His account book records the food: “je leur laissai 24 livres de fromage vieux” (I left them 24 pounds of old cheese). That December he sent “18 livres de fromage et autant de chair salée et 4 ou 5 livres de beurre cuit, cela valait 15 ou 16 fl.” (18 pounds of cheese, as much salt meat and 4 or 5 pounds of cooked butter; it was worth 15 or 16 florins).

Jean-David also became a farmer and a justice of the peace. In 1754–56 he built the Grand Chalet at Rossinière to hold about 600 cheeses. They went for export by way of Bulle, Vevey and Lyon.

Sources. Emile Henchoz, 'Jean-David Henchoz, curial de Rossinière', Journal de Château-d'Œx, 24 December 1948; A Living History (2018)

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says that in these years “les exportations de fromage augmentèrent très fortement” (cheese exports rose very sharply). Prices rose too, and more than tripled for Emmental and Sbrinz. The wholesale trade was “risqué, mais lucratif” (risky, but profitable). It was in the hands of firms based in Vevey, Bulle and Bern, whose agents handled sales and transport.

In the eighteenth century Château-d'Œx was “une communauté de 2000 âmes et 2000 vaches” (a community of 2,000 souls and 2,000 cows). It sold its cheese at the market in Vevey, over the Col de Jaman, and from there the cheese went through the port of Marseille. Pack horses also carried cheese down to Villeneuve, over the Col de Chaude.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Fromage” and “Château-d'Œx”

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland puts it plainly for this valley. “Les XVIIe et XVIIIe s. furent marqués par un abandon presque total des cultures” (the 17th and 18th centuries saw an almost total abandonment of crops). This was “au profit de l'élevage bovin et de la fabrication de fromages à pâte dure” (in favour of cattle and hard cheese). Before that, Château-d'Œx grew barley, hay and hemp, and made small cheeses.

The fat hard cheeses, unlike lean sérac, “se conservent longtemps et sont donc exportables” (keep a long time and so can be exported). The making of hard cheese was first recorded in the Gruyère and Saanen. The Alps had to import grain, mostly from Alsace and southern Germany.

In 1816 the English visitor John Cam Hobhouse came through, riding with Byron. At Rougemont he was explaining a high bill, and wrote: “this being reckoned a poor country, as no corn is grown here, and the bread is sent from Thoun.”

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS): “Pays-d'Enhaut”, “Château-d'Œx”, “Elevage”, “Marché agricole”; J. C. Hobhouse, diary, 20 September 1816

The house was built for Jean David Henchoz, curial of Rossinière. Its timber was felled from December 1752. It rose and was roofed in 1754, and the last carpenters left in November 1756.

The painted letters make up a dedication naming the builders, a prayer for the house, and verses on death. The band on death begins with lines by the French poet Antoinette Deshoulières (1638–1694). Man, she wrote, “commence à mourir longtemps avant qu'il meure” (begins to die long before he dies). Then comes the warning about pride and worms, and the call to do good today.

The commune says Henchoz wrote his own Christian convictions into the house. It says that the illness wearing him down shaped the texts. He died in 1758. The texts on death and the prayer were printed in a local guide of 1883, with six more verses.

Sources. The house itself (photographs); Château-d'Oex et le Pays-d'Enhaut (Club du Rubly, 1883), pp. 168–170; rossiniere.ch

The novel is a love story told in letters. Its lovers find in the mountain meadows a moral clarity they could not find in Paris. Rousseau suggested that the mountains brought people closer to their natural state, and so closer to virtue.

Four years earlier, in 1757, Edmund Burke had argued that terror, felt from a safe distance, was the source of the strongest feeling of all. He called it the sublime.

Sources. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761); Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

In 1816 Hobhouse called this a “poor country”, where no corn grew and even the bread came from Thun. By the end of 2025 Rougemont's population had fallen to 806.

Saanen, Gstaad's commune, went the other way, from 2,939 people in 1764 to 6,914 in 2000. In Rougemont the federal housing inventory counts 1,359 homes, and 61 per cent of them are second homes.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Rougemont (commune)” and “Saanen (commune)”; Federal Office for Spatial Development, housing inventory

Rousseau wrote of “le célèbre Rans-des-Vaches, cet Air si chéri des Suisses” (the famous Ranz des vaches, a tune so dear to the Swiss). He added “qu'il fut défendu sous peine de mort de le jouer dans leurs Troupes” (that it was forbidden on pain of death to play it in their regiments). The reason he gave was “parce qu'il faisoit fondre en larmes, déserter ou mourir ceux qui l'entendoient” (because it made those who heard it burst into tears, desert or die). It did so “tant il excitoit en eux l'ardent desir de revoir leur pays” (so strongly did it stir in them the burning wish to see their country again).

Byron heard it on 19 September 1816, coming down from the Dent de Jaman towards Montbovon. It was the day before he and Hobhouse passed through Rougemont. He wrote of “the Shepherds' shouting to us from crag to crag & playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible”. Then, he added, “as we went they played the ‘Ranz des Vaches’ and other airs by way of farewell.”

Sources. Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, 1768, article 'Musique'; Byron, Alpine Journal, 19 September 1816, in Cochran (ed.)

The details come from the school survey of 1799, known as the Stapfer survey, in which each schoolmaster described his school. The master at Flendruz explained the rise and fall in his numbers. They varied “à mesure que les paysans descendent après avoir Consommé les fourages des habitations les plus élevées” (as the farmers come down after using up the hay of the highest dwellings).

Under Bern's school rule of 1676, lessons ran in winter, from 16 October to 1 April. Rougemont's first school had 70 to 80 pupils in winter and 25 to 30 in summer. It met in what its master, Abraham Duperrex, called “une très mauvaise chambre dont la Commune pay le louage” (a very bad room, rented by the commune).

At La Manche the master was a young orphan of seventeen and a half, who had worked on mountain farms. His rented room was so bad and so cold that he could not live in it, and he walked a league each way, morning and evening.

Sources. Stapfer school survey, 1799 (Rougemont, Flendruz and La Manche returns); Musée du Vieux Pays-d'Enhaut, panel “L'école au 16ème et 18ème siècle”

The report called them the “bourgeois assistés”. In Switzerland a poor person was the duty of their commune of origin, and that commune had to provide for them.

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland describes mass poverty in rural Vaud in those years. It was at its worst in the famines of 1816–17 and 1846–47.

Sources. Musée historique de Lausanne, De l'émigration à l'immigration (2003), citing the report of 1834; HLS, “Pauvreté”

Potato blight, a fungus, spread across large parts of Europe from 1842. After the famine of 1816–17 the potato had become a staple food all over Europe. Where people relied on it alone, that became “une dépendance dangereuse” (a dangerous dependence).

In rural Vaud, Ticino and Bern this was a time of mass poverty. In the famines of 1816–17 and 1846–47 some 10 to 20 per cent of the population needed relief.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Nuisibles”, “Pomme de terre”, “Pauvreté”

Two brothers of Château-d'Œx, David-Vincent Henchoz (1734–1807) and Jacques-François Henchoz (1737–1814), left their whole fortune to the commune. They did so by a will of 1806 and a codicil of 1813.

In 1883 the valley's historians wrote about French. They said “il est peu de gens même qui ne le sachent lire et écrire, plus ou moins correctement” (there are few people indeed who cannot read and write it, more or less correctly). They added that this had not been so thirty years before.

The Collège Henchoz was rebuilt and extended in 2016. Today it holds most of the specialist classrooms of the Pays-d'Enhaut's schools.

Sources. Club du Rubly, Château-d'Œx et le Pays d'Enhaut vaudois, 1883; 'Le Centenaire du Collège Henchoz', Journal de Château-d'Œx, 9 December 1949; Écoles du Pays-d'Enhaut

In Switzerland a poor person was the responsibility of his commune of origin. As early as 1551 the Diet ruled that beggars should be sent back to their home commune, which had to provide for them. In the early nineteenth century rural Vaud knew mass poverty. In the worst years, between one person in ten and one in five needed help.

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says: “En maints endroits, on chercha la solution dans l'encouragement à l'émigration” (in many places the answer was sought in encouraging emigration). The commune paid the Atlantic crossing. It did so “en contrepartie du renoncement, le plus souvent définitif, au droit de bourgeoisie” (in return for giving up, usually for good, the right of citizenship in the commune).

Niederwil is now part of Rothrist. The 305 people who left were more than 12 per cent of its population, and the authorities threatened the reluctant with the police. The group left on 27 February 1855 and went by Basel, Paris and Le Havre to New Orleans, then on to St Louis. The cost, about 50,000 francs, was borrowed, and a year later the village closed its alms house.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Pauvreté” and “Emigration”; Andrej Abplanalp, “The ‘emigration’ savings model”, Swiss National Museum blog, 24 June 2020

Paper-cutting was already in the family. His mother was a teacher who also drew, and his father, a farmer, cut silhouettes as a hobby. Louis trained as a carpenter under his uncle Alois before he joined the post. He retired at fifty-seven because of his health.

The tourist office's guide says of the house where he lived: “The well-known découpage artist Louis Saugy (1871–1953) lived here. A postman by trade, with a strong and outgoing personality, he depicted country life with humour and great talent.”

The Louis Saugy trail starts and ends at the tourist office. Its 18 illustrated panels carry his paper-cuts and postcards from about 1900. They show washerwomen at the fountain, the café where people played cards and the herds going up to the summer pasture. The walk is 1.5 km long and takes about an hour and a half. There is almost no climbing, and families can do it with a pram.

Sources. Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, A Living History (2018); Musée du Vieux Pays-d'Enhaut, “Louis Saugy”; Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, “Parcours didactique Louis Saugy”; Alpes vaudoises, “In the footsteps of the past with Louis Saugy”

The paper's words were: “Le superbe mois de juillet a amené un très-grand concours d'étrangers dans notre pays, et il semble que leur nombre va encore en croissant. Actuellement, on en compte près de 600.” (The superb month of July has brought a very great crowd of foreigners into our country, and their number seems still to be growing. At present there are nearly 600.)

Sources. Le Progrès (Château-d'Œx), 31 July 1880

In the nineteenth century a poor Swiss was the responsibility of his home commune, and many communes encouraged the poor to leave. Some paid a family's passage across the Atlantic. They usually did so on condition that the family gave up its rights in the commune for good.

An advertisement of 16 June 1883 in Le Progrès ended: “Pour tous renseignements s'adresser à Benoit Dolder, agent d'émigration, Rougemont” (for all information apply to Benoit Dolder, emigration agent, Rougemont).

In 1896 the canton's health service found that immigration prevailed only around Lausanne, Vevey, Montreux and Moudon. Its report went on: “dans ceux d'Aubonne et du Pays d'Enhaut, c'est l'émigration qui l'emporte” (in the districts of Aubonne and the Pays-d'Enhaut, emigration wins).

Sources. HLS, 'Pauvreté' and 'Emigration'; Le Progrès (Château-d'Œx), 13 May 1882 and 16 June 1883; La Revue (Lausanne), 30 April 1897

Until the early nineteenth century, the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says, service in foreign armies was “de loin la plus nombreuse” (by far the largest) form of Swiss emigration. About a third of each generation of young men enlisted in the sixteenth century, and a fifth to a quarter in the seventeenth. By the eighteenth century, most recruits were boys of 16 to 19.

France hired most of them, but they also served Spain, Austria, Savoy, Venice, the Netherlands and Britain. The valley was then ruled by Bern. The Bernese regiment d'Erlach, raised in 1672, was the first of eleven Swiss regiments in the permanent service of France.

For an ordinary soldier it was a poor living. By the eighteenth century “la misère de la condition des simples soldats et de leurs proches était patente” (the poverty of ordinary soldiers and their families was plain to see).

The Club's authors also wrote that cretinism was unknown in the valley.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Emigration” and “Service étranger”; Club du Rubly, Château-d'Œx et le Pays d'Enhaut vaudois, 1883

Nothing came of it. In January 1900 the Montreux visitors' paper reported on the chalets at Château-d'Œx. All were taken by families “venues dans l'intention de passer l'hiver et de jouir des sports de cette saison” (who had come to spend the winter and enjoy its sports).

In 1911 the London Evening Standard told its readers: “consumptives are not received at Château d'Oex; the hotel proprietors have made this rule in justice to their guests”. In 1912 a Vaud visitors' paper listed the neighbouring resorts by the illnesses they treated. For Château-d'Œx it named none. It offered mountain air, excursions and trout fishing in the Sarine instead.

Sources. Château-d'Œx local paper, February 1895, as quoted in “The English experience of the Alps”; Journal et liste des étrangers (Montreux), 6 January 1900; London Evening Standard, 10 June 1911

The winter season was still young. The Hôtel Berthod had opened for its first winter only in 1894–95, and the railway reached Château-d'Œx in August 1904.

“Winter sports” then meant something different from today. The English clubs brought skating first, then curling, and skiing last of the three. By 1911 the English at Château-d'Œx came for skating, tobogganing and tennis, and for the air.

Sources. Journal et liste des étrangers (Montreux), 6 January 1900

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland names two men as the makers of the Riviera round Montreux. Ami Chessex, born at Territet, turned his family's hotel into the Grand-Hôtel de Territet. He helped found the funicular up to Glion, and he gave the land for the English church of St John's at Territet. His brother-in-law, Alexandre Emery, promoted the Montreux-Palace.

The hotel at Caux looked like a mediaeval fortress, with keeps and turrets. The British supplied the system that filled such hotels. Murray and Baedeker told people where to go, and Thomas Cook took them there.

Sources. HLS, “Ami Chessex” and “Alexandre Emery”; Julie Lapointe, “Les sociétés anonymes à vocation hôtelière de l'arc lémanique (1826–1914)” (2010); Der Bund, 30 June 1902; Le Confédéré, 16 July 1902; Laurent Tissot

Consumption was the likeliest way for an adult to die, and it struck rich and poor alike. Nobody knew the cause until Robert Koch identified the bacterium in 1882. At first doctors sent patients somewhere warm, such as Madeira or Menton.

At Davos, Alexander Spengler noticed that the local people did not seem to get consumption. He treated his patients with mountain air, long walks, cold water and milk. In 1890 Koch showed that sunlight killed the bacillus.

Sources. St Peter's, Château-d'Œx, “The English experience of the Alps”

The resorts of the valley also advertised in the English newspapers. In 1902 Château-d'Œx told readers of The Gentlewoman that it had “an English church and a good resident doctor”. The historian Jim Ring writes that before 1914 Château-d'Œx, Gstaad and Saanenmöser had “a principally English clientele, not least by advertising in the English newspapers”.

Sources. Laurent Tissot, on Thomas Cook and the Montreux railway; The Gentlewoman, 22 November 1902; Jim Ring, How the English Made the Alps (2000)

In the nineteenth century English families had looked for this kind of finishing in Belgium and France. The historian Caroline Bertron dates the Swiss schools' best years between the end of that century and the First World War. They took girls from about 14 or 15, when compulsory school ended, until 18 or 20.

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says that a proper education then had to end with a stay, even a short one. The stay had to be “dans la patrie des Rousseau, Pestalozzi” (in the homeland of Rousseau and Pestalozzi). A school newsletter of 1933 promised safety. It spoke of “dans le cas théoriquement toujours possible […] d'un conflit ou d'un bouleversement social” (the case, always possible in theory, of a conflict or social upheaval). In that case, it said, “[les élèves] sont, mieux que n'importe où, à l'abri du danger” (the pupils are safer here than anywhere).

At Château-d'Œx the English church was part of the offer. Les Volets Jaunes, a girls' school in a 32-room chalet, put the address of the chaplain of St Peter's at the head of its references. It came ahead of parents from Surrey, Kent, Warwickshire and Middlesex. The school also asked parents for “une contribution à l'église anglaise de Château d'Oex” (a contribution to the English church).

Sources. Caroline Bertron, “Finishing schools”, Le Mouvement Social, 2019; Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Ecoles privées”; the Volets Jaunes file, 1960s

Le Rosey calls itself one of Switzerland's boarding schools “since 1880”. Its main campus is the Château du Rosey at Rolle, on Lake Geneva between Lausanne and Geneva.

The school's own history says: “In 1916, in the midst of war, Henri resolved to spend winter in Gstaad, fleeing the sombre Léman season”. Henri Carnal was its director. The sombre season is the grey fog that settles on the lake in winter.

In February 1918 Château-d'Œx's hockey team beat “Rosey-Gstaad”, the champions of French-speaking Switzerland, by nine goals to nil.

Sources. Institut Le Rosey, “School History” and “Gstaad winter campus”, rosey.ch; Journal de Château-d'Œx, 9 February 1918

The founders were worried about what came with the tourists. “Les habitants de la vallée ont commencé à vendre ces trésors à des collectionneurs suisses et étrangers” (people in the valley had begun selling their treasures to Swiss and foreign collectors).

The building was renovated in 2021. In 2022 the museum also became the Centre Suisse du Papier Découpé, with exhibitions, courses and talks. The Swiss Papercut Association's collection holds “plus de 600 œuvres d'artistes membres” (more than 600 works by member artists), shown beside the old masters.

The museum is about five minutes' walk from Château-d'Œx station. It is open from Tuesday to Sunday in the afternoons, 1.30 to 5.30, except in November. A visit takes about an hour and a half, and a guide for a group costs CHF 60 for every fifteen people.

Sources. Musée du Pays-d'Enhaut & Centre Suisse du Papier Découpé, musee-chateau-doex.ch (pages “Musée”, “Découpages contemporains”, “Visiter”), read 27 September 2026

Tuck had joined Hoover's Commission for Relief in Belgium in 1915. From 1947 to 1949 he was the first head of the International Refugee Organization, in Geneva.

His family ran the château as a museum open to the public. On the evening of Tuesday 6 February 1973 a fire broke out between two floors at the top of the house, and the château burned.

Nobody was hurt, and the local museum says the papercuts were saved. This was “grâce au courage et la présence d'esprit de feu David Rossier, antiquaire” (thanks to the courage and presence of mind of the late David Rossier, antiques dealer).

Sources. Feuille d'avis de Vevey, 7 February 1973; Musée du Vieux Pays-d'Enhaut; Hoover Institution, William Hallam Tuck papers

Hannes Moor is a vet from Saanen who guides at its museum. In 2018 he put it this way: “It's a very old tradition dating back to the 15th century, based on the notion that the bells chase away evil – even sickness – and attract goodness … Only small cowbells were used; the big cowbells don't date back that far.” He adds that bells had first belonged to the churches, and that according to tradition farmers could put bells on their cows only if they added Christian symbols.

In 1883 the valley's own writers remembered the cows going up at the end of May. They recalled “les sons des cloches, surtout ceux des grosses campânes mises pour la circonstance” (the sound of the bells, above all the big bells put on for the occasion).

In Gruyère Gottrau wrote that when the big bells were set moving, “les animaux crient et s'agitent” (the animals call out and grow restless). The herdsman had them moved “avec une extrême prudence” (with extreme care). He was sure that “le sabbat régnerait dans son écurie si ces cloches venaient à sonner” (there would be a witches' sabbath in his cow-shed if those bells rang).

Until 31 October 2026 the museum at Château-d'Œx shows more than 60 decorated cowbells by the smith Paul Morier. Some of them still go up with the herds every summer.

Sources. Hannes Moor, interviewed in GstaadLife, 24 August 2018; Club du Rubly, Château-d'Œx et le Pays d'Enhaut vaudois, 1883; Georges de Gottrau, “L'Alpée en pays fribourgeois”, Les Alpes (Swiss Alpine Club), 1926; Musée du Pays-d'Enhaut, exhibition “Paul Morier et ses sonnailles décorées” (2026)

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland traces the long curve. The valley had 3,864 people in 1764 and 4,986 in 1900.

The canton's statistics office counted 4,998 residents at the end of 2025. There were 3,689 in Château-d'Œx, 504 in Rossinière and 805 in Rougemont.

Sources. Statistique Vaud, population at 31 December 2025; Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Pays-d'Enhaut”

L'Etivaz is made only from 10 May to 10 October, on alpine farms between 1,000 and 2,000 metres. Each wheel stays on the farm for seven days at most. It then matures for at least 135 days on spruce boards in the cellars at L'Etivaz.

Rougemont is one of the ten communes where L'Etivaz may be made. The commune's own history says that Rougemont sends its hard cheeses to L'Etivaz to mature.

Arnaud Guichard is a trained farmer and a certified cheesemaker. He took over the fromagerie from the Berouds, who had run it for 32 years.

Sources. Fromagerie Fleurette, “Histoire”; Commune de Rougemont, “L'histoire de Rougemont”; Association suisse des AOP-IGP, “L'Etivaz AOP”; Journal de Château-d'Œx, 28 May 1935

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, and it was first used successfully to cure a patient in 1942. It does not act on tuberculosis. The first drug that did was streptomycin. Albert Schatz isolated it on 19 October 1943, in Selman Waksman's laboratory at Rutgers University in the United States.

Britain's Medical Research Council tested streptomycin on patients from January 1947 and published the results in October 1948. Isoniazid followed in 1952, and combined treatment became the rule.

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland gives Leysin's story in two sentences. From 1947, it says, numbers fell “à la suite des nouveaux traitements antibiotiques” (following the new antibiotic treatments), and the clinics closed around 1955–1962. Leysin then rebuilt itself on summer and winter tourism, with the Berneuse cable car (1956), ski lifts, holiday homes from 1958, sports centres and international private schools. The Leysin American School opened in 1960.

The disease had been retreating for a century already, and the drugs finished what living standards had begun. In Bern, deaths from tuberculosis fell tenfold between 1856 and 1950, from better housing, food and hygiene.

Sources. Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS), “Leysin”; Wikipedia, “Penicillin” and “Streptomycin”; British MRC streptomycin trial, 1948

Saugy told him: “j'ai attendu l'âge de quarante ans pour exposer mes tableaux” (I waited until I was forty to show my pictures). His pictures were built from many small coloured pieces. They were cut first and then glued down on a green board.

Asked who bought them, he said: “Surtout des Américains et des Anglais” (Mostly Americans and English people). One Geneva businessman saw a Saugy in Winnipeg and could not buy it. He came to Rougemont to buy one from the artist himself.

Sources. René Burnand, “Visite à Louis Saugy”, Journal de Château-d'Œx, 23 December 1952; Musée du Vieux Pays-d'Enhaut, “Louis Saugy”

The district fire inspector told the story in the local paper a few days later. The fire started a little before midnight in a woodshed beside stores of timber. Within minutes it spread through buildings made entirely of wood.

In the cold, he wrote, the men on the hoses were turned to statues of ice within moments. The frozen hemp hoses could hardly be moved, and bottled gas exploded in a depot. The snow on the roofs stopped the fire spreading, but it also kept the firemen from reaching it.

Pumps came from Château-d'Œx, Saanen and the arsenal at Bulle, and about two million litres of water were used.

Sources. “Après l'incendie de Rougemont”, Journal de Château-d'Œx, 20 January 1953; Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, A Living History (2018)

His obituary in the local paper says: “au mur de sa chambre, les photos dédicacées de M. Churchill et du maréchal Montgomery faisaient sa fierté” (on his bedroom wall, the signed photographs of Mr Churchill and Field Marshal Montgomery were his pride).

In 1947 his paper-cuts were shown in a milk museum at the Comptoir Suisse fair in Lausanne, as part of Switzerland's dairy heritage.

The Musée du Vieux Pays-d'Enhaut in Château-d'Œx has a fine collection of his work. An 18-panel trail of 1.5 km follows him through Rougemont.

Sources. Obituary, Journal de Château-d'Œx, 7 July 1953; Journal de Château-d'Œx, 5 September 1947; Pays-d'Enhaut Tourisme, Louis Saugy trail

The gondola had been decided in 1958. Reporting its opening, the Feuille d'avis de Vevey wrote that Rougemont “ne compte plus aujourd'hui que 780 âmes. Pour échapper à la mort lente, il fallait miser sur le tourisme” (now has only 780 souls. To escape a slow death it had to bet on tourism). The Bernese side had done the same at Saanenmöser, Gstaad and Zweisimmen.

On 1 September 1959 the Journal de Château-d'Œx printed the commercial register's notices. One read: “Le chef de la maison est Charles-Louis Yersin, de et à Rougemont. Exploitation de l'institut alpin « Videmanette », à Rougemont” (the head of the business is Charles-Louis Yersin, of and at Rougemont; running the Institut Alpin Videmanette at Rougemont). The same column recorded more capital for Téléphérique Rougemont Videmanette S.A., the cable-car company.

The 1960 cantonal directory lists the Pension Bon Accueil under Charles-Louis Yersin. After his death, Adelheid Yersin took the school over. In March 1991 the village council noted “avec regrets” (with regret) her decision to stop running the Institut and to do other things from 1992.

Sources. Journal de Château-d'Œx, 1 September 1959 and 27 December 1988; Feuille d'avis de Vevey, 22 December 1959; Annuaire et indicateur vaudois, 1960; Journal du Pays d'Enhaut, 7 March 1991

Pittet told the story himself to Terre & Nature in 2000: “Je trouvais la tomme vaudoise trop fade. … Quant au nom de Fleurette, il m'a été inspiré par les chemisiers à fleurs que portait souvent la jeune fille qui aidait à l'emballage.” (I found the Vaud tomme too bland. … As for the name Fleurette, it came from the flowery blouses that the girl who helped with the packing often wore.)

Tomme Fleurette is a soft cheese with a flowery rind, made from raw milk. In 1988 Michel Beroud and his wife Hélène took over the village fromagerie, and the cheese with it. In 2001–02 it won its class at the Swiss Cheese Awards.

Sources. Terre & Nature, 12 October 2000; Fromagerie Fleurette, “Histoire”

Le Vieux Chalet was already a girls' boarding school in 1960, under Mme Jean Kiener. By 1978 it was one of only two left in Château-d'Œx, with Riant-Chalet.

Its advertisement of 1979, under “M. et Mme Jean Bach”, offered forty girls of 16 to 20 a language school with eight teachers. The course included preparation for French exams, art history, theatre, typing, cooking and sewing, with intensive skiing and tennis.

The Bach family says the house has been in the family since the early 1970s, when it was a girls' finishing school.

Sources. Annuaire et indicateur vaudois, 1960 and 1978; Tribune de Lausanne – Le Matin, 20 June 1979; Le Vieux Chalet, “About”

The fromagerie's own history tells the story. In 1988 Michel Beroud and his wife Hélène took over the village fromagerie, and with it the Tomme Fleurette. Early on, the cheese made its name through the comments of demanding customers, among them the chef Frédy Girardet. A new production building opened in 2000.

The commune's own history speaks of “la fameuse tomme de Rougemont” (Rougemont's famous tomme). It says that the cheese's many awards have carried its name far beyond the country's borders.

The picture on the front is a lithograph by Weibel-Comtesse, made between 1836 and 1842, of the inside of a chalet in Appenzell.

Sources. Fromagerie Fleurette, “Histoire”, tommefleurette.ch; Commune de Rougemont, “L'histoire de Rougemont”; card front caption

The federal housing inventory counts every dwelling in each commune and how many are main homes. In March 2026 it gave Château-d'Œx 3,002 dwellings, 43% of them second homes. Rossinière had 350, with 27%, and Rougemont 1,359, with 61%. Across the valley that makes 2,229 second homes out of 4,711 dwellings, just under half.

The cable car to La Videmanette opened in 1959 and joined the village to the ski slopes of the Gstaad side. It was rebuilt in 1984 and again in 2010. Afterwards, says the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, “plus de 350 chalets ont été bâtis, pour la plupart résidences secondaires” (more than 350 chalets were built, most of them second homes).

Then came Lex Weber. The campaigner Franz Weber wanted to stop “the endless building of second homes”. His win was narrow, with most support in the cities away from the Alps and opposition in the mountain resorts.

The Second Homes Act that puts the cap into effect came into force on 1 January 2016. Where the share is above 20%, no new second homes may be built. There are a few exceptions, such as flats let commercially to visitors and the conversion of old buildings or failing hotels.

Sources. Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE), housing inventory, March 2026; HLS, “Rougemont (commune)”; the Second Homes Act; Federal popular initiative “Schluss mit uferlosem Bau von Zweitwohnungen!” (2012) and Second Homes Act (2016)

The line from Montreux, finished in 1905, is narrow metre gauge, and the line on to Interlaken is standard gauge. A third rail was studied in the 1930s and dropped. In 2008 the MOB chose instead to build carriages whose wheels can move.

At Zweisimmen the train rolls over a ramp at 15 km/h. In a few seconds the wheels spread from 1,000 to 1,435 mm apart, and the carriage body rises from 350 to 550 mm to meet the higher platforms. Only the locomotive is changed, because the two lines use different power. The whole stop takes eight minutes.

Sources. Gstaad Mountain Rides; Gruyère Pays-d'Enhaut regional park; GoldenPass; Festival International de Ballons, Château-d'Œx; GoldenPass, “GoldenPass Express gauge adapting ramp”