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The route across the Timmelsjoch was originally opened up from the Passeiertal in the south. The actual name of the ridge and the Timmelstal leading into Ötztal derives from ancient pasturage and grazing rights in the uppermost Passeier area.
Various Tyrolean valleys were originally settled in this way via ridges and not from their mouth. |
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The ancient track across this ridge was one of many such routes in the Tyrol. Helping to promote trade, they were of great social significance and they also influenced culture, politics and religion. Until the modern era people undertook long journeys on foot. There were few long distance routes, as we know them today; carriers and pack-animals were highly important in local economy, just as carters and haulers were on the road. |
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By around 3000 BC the glaciers of the most recent Ice Age had melted, but the Alps remained grim and forbidding, a sinister kingdom presumed to harbour evil spirits. Solitary hunters, fugitives and scattered tribes were the only people who ventured into this world.
But the lure of treasure has always been great: in the early Bronze Age copper was extracted intensively and much later, in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern era, mining influenced the development of a road network.
Marble quarries, semiprecious stones and oil shales were all exploited. Travellers, pedlars and those with pack-animals all sought the shortest route, this not necessarily being the easiest. The hardships suffered by the pedlars and carriers of yore are hardly conceivable today.
The famous Ötztal pedlars carried about 100 kilograms per route.
This was an elementary school of modern Alpinism – no wonder, that the Ötztal is its cradle. |
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Timmelsjoch was always one of the most important such routes. This was due to the Tyrol’s political development, the route leading from Meran, the old capital, to the Passeier Valley. In Sankt Leonhard the paths forked, one crossing Timmelsjoch ridge and continuing through the Ötztal to the Inn Valley, whilst the other led to the Jaufen Paß and down to affluent Sterzing, then joining the great Brenner road. Saint Leonhard is the patron saint of carters and was also venerated by the pedlars.
The relatively heavy traffic across the ridges also depended to a great extent of alpine farming and the droving of sheep and cattle. The religious factor was important, too, pilgrimages going in both directions on certain feast-days.
It is difficult today to realize the power of religion and cults in those bygone day. The pilgrimages – frequently to a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary – were wearying and laborious, but they were sociable occasions, imparting a feeling for the breath of that little world called home. Many a marriage resulted from excursions such as these, they instilled a sense of belonging and they also provided an opportunity for talking business. |
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Timmelsjoch is the deepest non-glaciated indentation in the main Alpine ridge between the Reschen Paß and the Brenner. Its name is older than that of the Brenner, first being documented in 1241 als “Thymelsjoch”. This reference is found in a letter written by the Counts of Eschenlohe, a Bavarian dynasty.
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Until spelling was “Timmeljoch”, the name “Timmelsjoch” not prevailing until the road was built. The word “Timmels” came from Passeier and described the state of the alpine ground – uneven and humped.
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A 19th century reference indicates the public interest shown in the Timmelsjoch, perhaps the first idea, of a road originated at that time. The official “Bothe für Tirol und Vorarlberg” of October 1844 mentioned “barometric altimetry in the southern area of the Upper In Valley”.
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Modern surveying techniques were combined with earlier cartographic ideas. The places at which the height was measured varied from the entrance to a mine to the site of a forest chapel. One of the 42 points surveyed was Timmelsjoch with a height of 8000,0 Viennese feet.
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