Lachapelle-under-Rougemont

Lachapelle-under-Rougemont is a commune of the Territoire of Belfort attached to the canton of Rougemont-the-Castle located on the road from Belfort in Colmar, the RN83, with a few kilometers in the south of the solid mass of the the Vosges.

The name of the village Capella is mentioned as of the end of the 11th century. It then formed part of the seigniory of Rougemont.

From its situation with 15 km of Belfort, Lachapelle constituted a relay of station and a attended lodging of stage. At the time of the Restoration, in 1818 a small seminar is created which functioned to the war of 1870. Become free college in 1873, it accommodated in 1882 approximately 300 Alsatian pupils who came to study there in French to escape the germanisation from their province. At that time, the village counted 1001 inhabitants and belonged to the canton of Fontaine. It is undoubtedly the beer consumption by the travellers in the many inns of the locality which pushed the Grisez family to build in 1835 a brewery at the entry of the village while coming from Belfort. This famous brewery ceased its activity in 1962, victim of the industrial merger. Of 1893 with 1961 a workshop of forging, the Woerlin Establishments, manufactured points of shuttles for the weaving looms.

In 1914, Lachapelle was connected to Belfort by a branch of the local railroad to metric gauge track passing by Errues. At the beginning of the war, the line was prolonged by military engineering to the Alsatian village of Sentheim. It was used in an intensive way throughout all troop, conflict to transport material, supply, ammunition… the trains being tractor drawn by electric engines, more discrete than the steam engines which would have been immediately located by the very close enemy.

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