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Overview:
Bellegarde, France, For many years
Bellegarde sur Valserine existed merely as a suburb of Musinens.
It did not become a city until 1858, when in December of that
year, the Emperor Napoleon III granted it that status by
imperial decree in recognition of its growing importance.
Located where the Valserine river joins the Rhone, the
municipality had long enjoyed a certain importance as a
commercial and communication crossroads that was enhanced by its
proximity to Geneva's tax-free zone.
The train station built in the middle of the XIXth century
was the extra asset indispensable to an important economic
activity. At that time, the city was home to numerous industrial
enterprises drawn by the abundance of inexpensive waterpower
provided by the Valserine and the Rhone rivers. Spinning-mills,
paper-mills or wood-mills flourished, drawing power from the
"télémécanique", an ingenious system of cables
driven by huge pulleys transmitting the energy of the area's
natural waterfalls. In 1883, a dam built on the Valserine by the
Swiss engineer Louis Dumontthe ushered Bellegarde in the age of
hydroelectric power as the "City of energy".
Bellegarde became one of the first cities in France with
electrified street lights.
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