Near to
Apt, Gargas is more one regrouping of hamlets
that a true village. The landscapes are splendid
there, the history is one of oldest of the area,
the candied fruits are delicious there and the
church, chief of work ignored, deserves really
an attentive visit.
Thus veiled a good number of reasons to be mislaid
a few times on the small roads of Gargas. History:
The traces of life go up very far in Gargas
as the many fossils present in the argillaceous
marls at the neighbourhoods of the village attest
some.
They were used as reference to the 19th century
to create a division of the geological time
scale to which the name of under stage gargassien
was given.
Human traces of occupation to paleolithic and
the Neolithic era were also indexed on the commune.
It is on the hill of Perréal that Gallic
Vulgientes will settle a few thousands of years
later. This dominant position their will make
it possible to resist a few times the Roman
occupation.
The village was in turn the stronghold of the
famous family of Agoult, then that of Simiane
and finally possession of the Cop until the
revolution.
This fortified town was the theatre many devastations
at the time of the wars of religion, in turn
catholic then protesting.
In 1597, the castle and the village were destroyed
definitively and the inhabitants fled.
The village will be rebuilt little by little
in the plain in the form of dispersed hamlets.
Equipped with under ground rich in oxide, like
besides almost all the close villages, Gargas
launched out at the 19th century in the industry
of ochre and counted to six factories of extraction
of the invaluable powder.
Ochre was exploited in galleries and not with
sky open as to Rustrel. These galleries were
sometimes reconverted in mushroom beds.
Their access is generally interdict for reasons
of safety.
The exploitation is now strongly reduced.
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