Channel of the Resident of Nevers

The channel of the Resident of Nevers connects the basin of the the Loire to that of the the Seine via the river Yonne. It crosses the department of the Nievre, them Vaux of Yonne and finishes its race with Auxerre, city located in the middle of the department of Yonne.

Of a length of 180km, energy of Saint-Leger-of-Vines, small town located in the south from Nievre in Auxerre, the channel of the Resident of Nevers is composed of 110 locks; 32 located on the Loire slope and 78 on the Seine slope.

Built at the beginning to facilitate the Floatation of wood of Clamecy towards Paris, the channel of the Resident of Nevers becomes actually an important axis of communication which contributes to the economic development of Vaux of Yonne and its area until the arrival of the railroad to the 19th century.

It is exclusively reserved today for the pleasure sailing, with the great happiness of the tourists who regard it as being one of the most beautiful channels of Europe.

The building work of the channel began in 1784 with Collancelle. There the largest vault of the site was bored, measuring 758 meters length, with upstream the ponds of Be worth and Baye, and downstream, the scale of the sixteen locks.

In the beginning, it was by no means a question of connecting the the Loire with the the Seine, the goal was simply to allow wood coming from the area of Châtillon-in-Bazois to at the time join the system of wood floatation set up since the slopes of the Morvan.

If, at the beginning, the construction of the channel of the Resident of Nevers closely remains related to the floatation, it becomes, at the end of work in 1843, a tool of economic development as well as an extremely practical ship canal.

It facilitates the transport of the foodstuffs (wine, corn,…) and of the materials (stone, coal,…) and contributes in particular to the development of the quarries stone calcareous located at Chevroches and Dornecy.

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