Fleuthe Bridge

Before the machines came to the Ruhr region

Today, the Fleuthe Bridge, which at first glance appears inconspicuous, is located off a main road. However, this historical remnant tells a story from a time before steam engines and the railway turned the Ruhr region inside out.

It gets cold on the Lower Rhine. In the second half of the 17th century, the region runs out of firewood. Coal is a good alternative to fuel. It is mined on the banks of the Ruhr. In tunnels running parallel to the horizon, people dug into the earth and extracted as much coal as possible. But how is the coal supposed to get from the Ruhr valley to the Lower Rhine? Ships cannot yet navigate the Ruhr. But the town of Gahlen has a harbour on the Lippe. The coal could be distributed from there. All that was needed was a north-south connection through the county of Mark. This is how the 40-kilometre-long Gahlen coal route was created in the 1760s. In part, the builders used old paths that had already been laid out by the Romans. As the importance of coal grew, so did the Gahlen Coal Road. Due to the high transport volume, the road is constantly extended and improved. In 1853, the seven metre long Fleuthe Bridge is inaugurated. Ten years later, Friedrich Grillo puts his Consolidation Colliery in Schalke into operation.

Nowadays, when you see the Fleuthe Bridge for the first time, you are initially puzzled. Its former use is not immediately obvious. The Fleuthe, which used to run under the bridge, no longer exists. The stream was a tributary of the Emscher. After this was relocated at the beginning of the 20th century, it dried up completely. The Fleuthe Bridge and the Gahlensche Straße also became less important due to the increasing use of rail transport and the northward migration of the coal industry. Today, the Fleuthe Bridge is a reminder of the time before industrialisation took hold. When the sound of coal was not yet the mechanical pounding of railways and steam engines, but the knocking of mallets and iron and the clattering of hooves. Nevertheless, the Gahlen coal route is still important to people in the Ruhr region today. Two of today's main roads coincide with parts of the old coal route.

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