The Mountains of Saas-Fee

31 October 2021

The Dom is one of the thirteen mountains of more than 4000 meters surrounding the village of Saas-Fee in the canton of Wallis.

The Dom ( 4 545 metres) is the highest mountain on Swiss territory, but not the most famous one. That is the Matterhorn (4 478 metres)

Since the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the end of the seven-year war (1756-1763), the village welcomed more and more (young) English aristocrats on their way to Italy on their Grand Tour.

After the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, painters and writers brought the Alpine landscape to the fore. Tourism developed after 1850, encouraged by railways, better road connections, health care resources and a new industrial upper class.

The first hotels opened around 1860 in Saas-Fee, mainly visited by British and German tourists. The silent witnesses are the victorian-style buildings, the 1912 Britannia Hütte in nearby Mattmark and the first ski lifts.

A railway connection is still lacking, however. The most remote villages were connected to the railway network in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example, Zermatt in 1891.

The citizens of Saas-Fee rejected the construction in 1907-1908. They did not get a second chance.

The author Gustav Imseng wrote about these events half a century later:

“ 1907-1908 herrschten unter den Einwohnern von Saas-Fee unstimmigkeiten, weil die schweizerische Gesellschaft für ein Eisenbahnprojekt Stalden-Saas-Fee viel Land aufgekaut hatte. Ein Teil der Bevölkerung war aber mit dieser Entwicklung nicht einverstanden. Infolgedessen fand das Projekt die Verwirklichung nicht. Ob nun eine Eisenbahnverbindung für das Saastal ideal gewesen wäre, darüber mag sich jeder Saaser selber seine Gedanken machen, auf alle Fälle ist die Zeit der Entscheidung vorbei”.

Saas-Fee is and remains one of the pearls of the Alps, however:

” Saas-Fee, die Perle des Saastals” (Gottlieb Studer, Jahrbuch SAC 1864) en “ Fee…..eine der schönsten Perlen der Alpenwelt” (Ivan Tschüdi, Die Tourist in der Schweiz, 1884).

(Source and further information: P.J. Ruppen, G. Imseng, W. Imseng, Saaser Chronik, Saas-Fee, 1988; www.saas-fee.ch).