Global InformationWatermills on Zala River information
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For centuries, the watermills on the Zala river (Zala County, Western Transdanubia, Hungary) had co-existed in a single harmonious unity with each other as well as with the river, the Zala valley and Zala meadow, both latter ones renowned for their beauty. Landscape rehabilitation would indeed be necessary because due to the closure of the mills and the destruction of the sluices, the level of the ground water in the meadows, usually having very loamy soil, has dramatically decreased, which has had detrimental impacts on the condition of the meadows. The declining tendency in the grassland culture has not helped either. What is more, in several cases parts of the meadows were turned into arable lands or industrial sites. The final blow to the deteriorating meadows that gradually grew characterless was dealt by the disgraceful regulation of the river Zala (rather meaning its canalisation) in the beginning of the 1960s (Izsák 2016). A further station of the process was the elimination of the mills from the life of the river for all. „There were about 200 known steam mills and watermills in the county Zala at the end of the 1800s (the territory of the county was much larger at that time though) (Molnár 2015). According to the statistical data of the Zala county archives of the year 1949, there were about 180 mills in operation in the county then (140 of which located in the county’s present, smaller territory). In the beginning of the 1940s, there were still about 37 mills grinding on the river Zala (Izsák and Kummer 2011). One can still find water in some old mill-ponds (For the history of a miller's family, see Jakosa 2011, 2012, both in Hungarian). These ponds provide suitable habitat for some aquatic organisms. As for the history of the published data and photos, I. Hajdu, J. Izsák, Á. Jakosa, Gy. Kummer and Mrs. M. Marx, the latter working with Göcseji Muzeum, Zalaegerszeg decided in 2004 to start gathering documents and data systematically on the watermills along the river Zala. We have based our selection of the mills to be presented on a list from the year 1949 preserved in the Zala-county archives. The chart was provided by Mr. Gy. Kummer. A significant number of the photos were also taken by him. The mills indicated by red characters exist today mainly in documents and in the mind's eye only. For the possibility of hydropower by the water of small rivers, e.g. Zala, see Gerse 2014.