Raon-aux-Bois () is a
commune in the
Vosges department
Department may refer to:
* Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility
Government and military
*Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...
in
Grand Est in northeastern
France.
Inhabitants are called ''Raonnais'' in French.
Geography
Raon-aux-Bois is positioned in the district known as the
Vôge Plateau, on the western edge of the
Vosges Mountains. As the name of the commune implies, the district has retained its woodland countryside, with traditional mature timberland in the south and conifer plantations to the north.
A small river, the , crosses the centre of the village on the way to
Arches where it joins up with the
Moselle
The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...
. The river's source is in the Forest of Humont to the south.
The word 'Raon' is believed to share the same root as the English word 'ravine', and to indicate, in this instance, the confluence
of several streams; here the Champée, the Prés Roussel and the Racine all feed into the Niche.
History
The earliest traces of human activity date back only to the late Middle Ages, suggesting that throughout and beyond the first millennium the thick forest of this part of
Lorraine were left to nature.
Deuring the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there are records of people from Raon repopulating the neighbouring village of
Bellefontaine, which had been abandoned a century or so earlier, probably as a result of
plague.
There are few surviving records of Raon from its early centuries, but it is believed to have been controlled at various times by one of three lordships, while on the ecclesiastical side the church, dedicated to
Amé de Remiremont, fell within the
Diocese of Saint-Dié in the deanery of
Remiremont.
In 1790 the village was placed within the canton of
Éloyes
Éloyes () is a commune in the Vosges department in Grand Est in northeastern France. Éloyes station has rail connections to Épinal, Remiremont and Nancy.
See also
*Communes of the Vosges department
The following is a list of the 507 commun ...
, an arrangement which lasted virtually ten years. The present administrative structure is based on dispositions effected in 1800.
During the nineteenth century and well into the first part of the twentieth century, the village experienced a steady prosperity based on the spinning and starching industries.
Personalities
Julien Absalon, a mountain biker born in 1980 at nearby
Remiremont, grew up at Raon-aux-Bois.
See also
*
Communes of the Vosges department
References
Communes of Vosges (department)
{{Vosges-geo-stub