Mountain pass in Austria
Turracher Höhe, also called Turracherhöhe, refers to a village, a pass across the Alps, and a countryside in the Gurktal Alps in Austria. The village and the Turracher Lake at the pass, which both share the same name, are separated by the border of the two federal states of Styria and Carinthia. Because of its distance to early settlement areas and its high location, the region was not settled until relatively late. In the 17th century, mining was started below the Turracherhöhe. The opening up of the top of the pass by a paved road did not occur until later. During the 20th century, the region was gradually developed for tourism. Efforts are being made to maintain the
diversity of flora and fauna of the Turracherhöhe by means of landscape conservation areas and careful and nature-oriented extension of the tourist facilities.
Geography.
Geographical location.
The Turracherhöhe is situated in the Nock mountains, the western part of the Gurktal Alps. The area extends from the peaks of the Rinsennock (2,334 m) in the west to the Lattersteighöhe (2,264 m) in the east; in the north-south direction, it extends from the village of Turrach to the plain of Reichenau in the south. Somewhat farther away are the peaks of Eisenhut (2,441 m), Großer Königstuhl (2,331 m), and Gruft (2,232 m).
The highest point of the approx. two km long pass summit has an altitude of 1,795 m above sea level south of the Turracher Lake. The lake has a water level of 1,763 m above sea (Adria) level and is connected to the village. The Turracher Höhe, as a "classic" pass summit, is also part of a drainage divide between the Mura valley and the Upper Gurk River, whose source is beneath the Lattersteighöhe at approx. 2,000 m above sea level.
The Turracher Road (B95), which goes from Salzburg along the western shore of Turracher Lake, connects the Styrian Upper Mura valley in the north with the Upper Gurk valley in Carinthia, and it continues further to Feldkirchen and the basin of Klagenfurt in the south. The road on the pass (from Turrach to the Reichenau plain) has a length of 16 km; the section between the junctions to the Murauer Road (B97) in Predlitz and the Kleinkirchheimer Road (B88) near Patergassen is 35 km long.
A total of three municipalities share the region of Turracher Höhe: Styrian Predlitz-Turrach in the north and the Carinthian municipalities of Reichenau and Albeck in the south. There are no direct roads onto the pass summit from Albeck.
The "divided" village.
For a long time, there were only single farmsteads and accommodations for lumberjacks who chopped wood for the mines and smelting works in Turrach, as well as for the seasonal miners and stonemasons, on the Turracher Höhe. A compact settlement did not develop until tourism emerged in the second half of the 20th century.
Today, the village on the pass summit has around 100 inhabitants, and there are more than 400 secondary residences. Like the Turracher Lake, it belongs partly to the Styrian municipality of Predlitz-Turrach and partly to the Carinthian municipality of Reichenau. The border of the federal states runs roughly through the middle of the village and the lake. The northern part, which belongs to Styria, has the postal code 8864, the southern part on Carinthian territory has the postal code 9565; on the other hand, the telephone area code is the same for the whole village (04275).
Thus, there are formally two villages on Turracher Höhe, where the Styrian part belongs to the district of Turrach in the municipality of Predlitz-Turrach, and the village of "Turracherhöhe" (official spelling) on the Carinthian side is a district of the municipality of Reichenau. But no town signs were installed within the village; a town sign at the entrance of the village announces the Reichenau district of "Turracherhöhe" on the Carinthian side, and a sign bears the inscription "Fremdenverkehrsgebiet Turracher Höhe" (Tourist Region Turracher Höhe) at the entrance to the Styrian village. Those who are not aware of the division of the village due to administrative politics can only suspect that the border between the two states runs here because of the two state flags along the former federal road.
In the wide saddle of the pass summit, where the road runs horizontally for two kilometres, there are two luxury hotels, a resort belonging to the German trade union IG Bau and over 30 small and medium-sized hotels and guest houses. There are many vacation houses in the southern and western stone pine forest, as well as the eastern side of the lake. However, these houses are predominantly concealed by trees or are situated in hollows, so they barely stand out from the natural surroundings.
The facilities include a bank and some shops for athletic items and souvenirs. But there is no grocery store or gasoline station in Turracher Höhe, for example. For a long time, there was also no church or chapel. An ecumenical place of worship was not built until 1985, at the suggestion of the inhabitants. It is administered by the parish of Stadl an der Mur and is available for all Christian creeds.
Climate.
There is plenty of sunshine during the entire year. Due to the high altitude, there is significantly less cloudiness and fog than in the Drau valley, for example. Thus, the average prevailing temperatures are also favorable: the average temperature in January is between -5.9 and -8.2 °C, in July it is between 10.6 and 11.0 °C, and the yearly median is 1.9 to 2.2 °C. By comparison, Klagenfurt, with a height of 447 m above sea level, is 1300 m lower than Turracher Höhe. Its average temperature in January is -5.8 °C, its average temperature in July is 18.3 °C, and its yearly median is 7.7 °C.
The precipitation of 1,218 mm is rather low for the mountains. Snowfall normally starts in October at the latest, and a dense blanket of snow quickly forms, which remains until April or sometimes even until May. On average, there is snow for 158 days on Turracher Höhe.
History.
First settlements.
The name Turrach is derived from the old term, "Durrach", which was used for a forest, where there are a lot of fallen, dried up ("dürr") trees lying around. The term is widely used in Carinthia, as well as in the rest of Austria.
While the region around today's Predlitz and the Mur was already colonised by Slavs in the 6th century, the first clearings and settlements south of Turracher Höhe are known to be from the early 14th century. Politically, the region was initially part of the duchy of Carinthia, but it was already divided among three territories in the 12th and 13th centuries, due to the splitting off of the Lungau to Salzburg and Murau to the duchy of Styria. Until tourism began to develop in the late 1920s, there had only been a few farmsteads north and south of the pass summit since the late Middle Ages, but no compact settlement. Also Turracher Höhe played no role as a traffic route for a long time. During the Middle Ages and early modern times, connections over the Katschberg in the west and over the Flattnitz in the east were the main traffic routes in the north-south direction, while routes over Turrach had only local importance, e.g. for the transport of salt from the Salzkammergut to Reichenau (first documented mention in 1332), where there was a branch of the toll office.
In the upper Mura valley north of Turracher Höhe, the region around Predlitz (first documented mention in 1311) was sparsely populated because the slopes to the right of the Mura were less suitable for cultivation. During the Middle Ages, the dominant settlement of this region was Murau, which belonged to Liechtenstein. But south of Turracher Höhe, rural colonization around Reichenau, where there was also a regional court in 1520, provided more compact settlements and single farms.
Mining.
With a certificate issued in Moosheim dating from the year 1256, the Carinthian duke Ulrich III gave the minstrel and poet, Ulrich von Liechtenstein, the sovereign right for mining in the district of Murau, which contains the region around Turracher Höhe. However, concrete indications of mining in the Turrach region cannot be found either in this document or in the following centuries.
In 1657, Johann Adolf Count Schwarzenberg, who ruled Murau, initiated the search for copper ore. In the Steinbachgraben, huge amounts of limonite (a type of iron ore) were found, whereupon the count asked Emperor Leopold I for a license for mining and smelting, which was issued on January 31, 1660. Already in the same year, Johann Adolf ordered the building of a bloomery for smelting iron in Turrach, and in 1662, the first tapping was performed. Initially the mining and smelting took place mainly on the Styrian side around the village at the northern foothill. In 1783, Count Johann Nepomuk Anton of Schwarzenberg ordered the extension of the road, which was 15 km long, from Predlitz to his factory in Turrach, in order to facilitate the ore transport. But there were routes for transporting wood and charcoal above the village, too, which reached today's pass summit.
The general economic crisis resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and their consequences also reached Turrach's mining in the first two decades of the 19th century. Following that, the iron business—under Peter Tunner senior (the father of Peter Tunner), who led the company from 1823 to 1844—underwent a considerable advancement, due to the streamlining of working methods and the introduction of modern technologies. In the middle of the 19th century, the annual quantity of ore delivered by the approximately 60 miners amounted to about 100 to 120,000 quintals (approx. 5,600 to 6,700 t). At that time, mining was only done during the winter, because the ore had to be pulled to the smelting facilities in bags.
As of 1863, a rocking Bessemer converter, which made the steel production more efficient, was used in Turrach. In 1865, three converters with a capacity of 35 to 40 quintals and two blast furnaces were available. At that time, the iron smelting facility was Styria's largest and was considered to be one of the most modern in Europe. In spite of the technical innovations, there was soon an economic decline. As of the 1870s, the sales worsened; the production of raw iron decreased from 3,800 to 1,500 t between 1869 and 1885. Besides increasing coal prices, Turrach's disadvantageous location off the major transport routes caused high transportation costs, which were responsible for the decreasing competitiveness of the iron companies. In 1899, the iron smelting facility was leased out, which brought no improvement, so the furnace in Turrach was finally shut down in the spring of 1909.
Besides iron mining, copper mining occasionally played a role. Other natural resources are small amounts of high-grade anthracite coal, which was mined until the 1950s and 1960s. The mining of cinnabar at the Kornock can already be proven in the 17th century. A former stone pit at Lake Turrach, as well as a magnesium carbonate and a slate pit, are evidence of the mining activities around Turracher Höhe, which however were entirely given up in the course of the 20th century for economic reasons.
Development of tourism.
In the 19th century, the first housing was built on the pass summit at the Turracher Lake. It served as accommodations, as well as for serving the lumberjacks, stonemasons and miners. Thus, it is known that at the provably oldest inn still existing today on the Turracher Höhe, the "Seewirt", there was already an Alpine public house in operation in 1830. Already at the end of the 19th century, the first tourists came for hiking on the Turrach and shortly before the First World War, the first skiers came for extended ski trips. Little by little, other hotels and inns also opened, among which are the "Jägerwirt" (1905), "Siegel" (1911) and "Hochschober" (1929), which still exist today.
It has not been recorded when an old mountain track was converted into a road. On the south side, it is known that the stone "Teufelsbrücke" (Devil's Bridge) was built over the ravine of the Stangenbach in 1893. Between the wars, the streets, which already at that time essentially had the same course they have today, were adapted to the demands of modern automobile traffic. On the south side, bus service was established in 1928, and the bus line Predlitz–Passhöhe followed in the north in 1929. However, the first tourists were nevertheless forced to walk for kilometres to