Les Ponts-de-Martel

Les Ponts-de-Martel is a municipality in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.

History

Les Ponts-de-Martel is first mentioned in 1360 as ''Martel''.

Geography

Les Ponts-de-Martel has an area, , of . Of this area, or 59.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 30.5% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 4.7% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.4% is either rivers or lakes and or 5.3% is unproductive land.Swiss Federal Statistical Office-Land Use Statistics
2009 data accessed 25 March 2010

Of the built-up area, housing and buildings made up 2.2% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.6%. Out of the forested land, 27.1% of the total land area is heavily forested and 3.4% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 3.8% is used for growing crops and 39.9% is pastures and 15.5% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.

The municipality was located in the district of Le Locle, until the district level was eliminated on 1 January 2018. It is on the north side of the ''Vallée de la Sagne et des Ponts''. It consists of the village of Les Ponts-de-Martel and the hamlets of Martel-Dernier and Petit-Martel. The settlement of Le Joratel went to the municipality of Brot-Plamboz in 1920.

Coat of arms

The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is ''Per fess, Azure a Bridge Argent and Gules a Hammer Or in bend sinistre.''

Demographics

Les Ponts-de-Martel has a population () of . , 6.5% of the population are resident foreign nationals.Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Superweb database - Gemeinde Statistics 1981-2008
accessed 19 June 2010 Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of 1%. It has changed at a rate of 0.2% due to migration and at a rate of 1.1% due to births and deaths.
accessed 24-October-2011

Most of the population () speaks French (1,215 or 93.7%) as their first language, German is the second most common (47 or 3.6%) and Albanian is the third (7 or 0.5%). There are 6 people who speak Italian and 1 person who speaks Romansh.

, the population was 48.7% male and 51.3% female. The population was made up of 565 Swiss men (44.7% of the population) and 51 (4.0%) non-Swiss men. There were 610 Swiss women (48.2%) and 39 (3.1%) non-Swiss women.Canton of Neuchatel Statistics
''République et canton de Neuchâtel - Recensement annuel de la population'' accessed 13 October 2011 Of the population in the municipality, 604 or about 46.6% were born in Les Ponts-de-Martel and lived there in 2000. There were 373 or 28.8% who were born in the same canton, while 174 or 13.4% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 102 or 7.9% were born outside of Switzerland.

, children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 27% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 53.3% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 19.7%.

, there were 532 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 601 married individuals, 110 widows or widowers and 54 individuals who are divorced.STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 - 2000
accessed 2 February 2011

, there were 497 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.4 persons per household. There were 155 households that consist of only one person and 60 households with five or more people. , a total of 482 apartments (82.7% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 56 apartments (9.6%) were seasonally occupied and 45 apartments (7.7%) were empty.Swiss Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB - Datenwürfel für Thema 09.2 - Gebäude und Wohnungen
accessed 28 January 2011 The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 0.67%.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

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color:yellowgreen width:40 mark:(line,white) align:center
bar:1793 from:start till:695 text:"695"
bar:1850 from:start till:1687 text:"1,687"
bar:1860 from:start till:2103 text:"2,103"
bar:1870 from:start till:2189 text:"2,189"
bar:1880 from:start till:2133 text:"2,133"
bar:1888 from:start till:1979 text:"1,979"
bar:1900 from:start till:1957 text:"1,957"
bar:1910 from:start till:1833 text:"1,833"
bar:1920 from:start till:1850 text:"1,850"
bar:1930 from:start till:1568 text:"1,568"
bar:1941 from:start till:1500 text:"1,500"
bar:1950 from:start till:1508 text:"1,508"
bar:1960 from:start till:1429 text:"1,429"
bar:1970 from:start till:1327 text:"1,327"
bar:1980 from:start till:1183 text:"1,183"
bar:1990 from:start till:1192 text:"1,192"
bar:2000 from:start till:1297 text:"1,297"

Politics

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 30.81% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SP (21.3%), the LPS Party (17.23%) and the FDP (10.89%). In the federal election, a total of 560 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 59.4%.

Peat cutting

From 1917 onwards, the Swiss Peat Co-operative (Schweizerische Torfgenossenschaft, S. T. G.) exploited the 50 hectares of peatland leased from the ''Société Anonyme des Marais des Ponts'' near Les Ponts-de-Martel. The narrow gauge railway tracks with a gauge of } were partly made from portable Decauville rails, partly from permant rails on wooden sleepers. Their length was about , to which were added about of fixed tracks at the station, in the sheds and on the loading ramp. The transports from the dry fields to the loading ramp and to the peat sheds were done by hand in 1918-1919. In 1920, to increase efficiency, a 600 mm gauge tractor with an Austro-Daimler petrol engine was purchased, for which a small shed was built on the peat field. There was also a gauge peat railway with high rails on wooden sleepers. It had a maximum gradient of 15 % and minimum radii of . Its length, including a 50 m long siding at the loading ramp, was 750 m.E. Probst: tp://ftp.wsl.ch/pub/buergi/Torf/Probst/Band_III.pdf ''Torffelder des Mittellandes.''In: tp://ftp.wsl.ch/pub/buergi/Torf/Probst ''Die Torfausbeutung in der Schweiz in den Jahren 1917 bis 1921,''p. 258–372.

Economy

, Les Ponts-de-Martel had an unemployment rate of 4.1%. , there were 82 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 36 businesses involved in this sector. 91 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 24 businesses in this sector. 271 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 46 businesses in this sector. There were 591 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 43.5% of the workforce.

the total number of full-time equivalent jobs was 358. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 68, of which 67 were in agriculture and 1 was in forestry or lumber production. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 79 of which 42 or (53.2%) were in manufacturing and 37 (46.8%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 211. In the tertiary sector; 73 or 34.6% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 24 or 11.4% were in the movement and storage of goods, 8 or 3.8% were in a hotel or restaurant, 1 was in the information industry, 3 or 1.4% were the insurance or financial industry, 5 or 2.4% were technical professionals or scientists, 17 or 8.1% were in education and 69 or 32.7% were in health care.

, there were 265 workers who commuted into the municipality and 278 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net exporter of workers, with about 1.0 workers leaving the municipality for everyone entering. About 24.9% of the workforce coming into Les Ponts-de-Martel are coming from outside Switzerland.Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Statweb
accessed 24 June 2010 Of the working population, 11.7% used public transportation to get to work, and 51.1% used a private car.

Religion

From the , 121 or 9.3% were Roman Catholic, while 748 or 57.7% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 2 members of an Orthodox church (or about 0.15% of the population), there were 3 individuals (or about 0.23% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 291 individuals (or about 22.44% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 9 (or about 0.69% of the population) who were Islamic. There were 4 individuals who were Buddhist and 5 individuals who belonged to another church. 213 (or about 16.42% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 45 individuals (or about 3.47% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Les Ponts-de-Martel about 472 or (36.4%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 111 or (8.6%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a '' Fachhochschule''). Of the 111 who completed tertiary schooling, 64.9% were Swiss men, 20.7% were Swiss women, 9.0% were non-Swiss men and 5.4% were non-Swiss women.

In the canton of Neuchâtel most municipalities provide two years of non-mandatory kindergarten, followed by five years of mandatory primary education. The next four years of mandatory secondary education is provided at thirteen larger secondary schools, which many students travel out of their home municipality to attend. The kindergarten in Les Ponts-de-Martel is combined with Brot-Plamboz. During the 2010-11 school year, there were 2 kindergarten classes with a total of 34 students between the municipalities. In the same year, there were 5 primary classes with a total of 87 students.Statistical Department of the Canton of Neuchâtel
Mémento de l'année scolaire 2010/2011 accessed 17 October 2011

, there were 61 students in Les Ponts-de-Martel who came from another municipality, while 53 residents attended schools outside the municipality.

Notable people

* Georges Schneider (1925–1963), a Swiss alpine skier, competed at the 1948, 1952, 1956 and 1960 Winter Olympics
* Louis Zutter (1865–1946) was a Swiss gymnast

Notable residents

The village was the original home of the Swiss watchmaker Mathey-Tissot.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ponts-de-Martel
Municipalities of the canton of Neuchâtel