Near the village of Les Rey lies the heart of the Ollomont mining complex.
In the early 1700s, Count Perrone, in partenrship with the lawyer Jean-François Ferrod, starts mining works. The phase of maximum yield occurs between the second half of the 1700s and the Napoleonic age followed by phases of activity reduction.
An attempt at recovery comes from the Società Anonima Minières et Fonderies de Valpelline, but it is not successful. In 1929 it is sold to the Società Anonima Nazionale Cogne which resume work and the mine continued to be exploited throughout the period of the conflict to meet the needs of war. The exploitation ceases in 1945, when the mine is definitively closed and the company definitively renounce the mining concession in 1952.
After the war, the Società Nazionale Cogne transforms part of the buildings into a summer camp for children. The building complex in the hamlet of Morion, used as accommodation for administrative and technical staff, also becomes a tourist building known as the “Casa Alpina” of the Barnabite Fathers.
The mining village
The buildings in the mining village of Les Rey, built in the second half of the 19th century, were built to ac- commodate various functions such as such laboratories for maintenance, forging and housing for miners. These two storied parallel buildings have pavilion rooves that, from an architectural point of view, copy features of those designed by De Robilant at the end of the 1700s.
During the 1800s, with the expansion of the copper market it is necessary to strengthen the processes immediately following the extraction, and therefore the plants on site are expanded and strengthened with the realization, in 1809, of a “bocard” for the beating of the material and a washery.
In the 1930s, thanks also to the Società Anonima Nazionale Cogne, there are additional housing for workers and administrative and technical staff, offices, warehouses, communal lounges, barns, a stable, a hydroelectric plant, the compressor room, the electric sawmill, some powder kegs located in a decentralized position for safety reasons and barracks for security personnel.
The Sant’Anna gallery
In the early 1900s, to facilitate the handling of the extracted mineral, some new carriage tunnels are opened in the Saint-Jean section at a lower altitude than the first excavations – which are located about 120 meters upstream of Les Rey – such as the Saint-Jean tunnel and the Sant’Anna tunnel at 1,360 meters, at the level of the stream near the square of the Les Rey factories.
From this level three wells are also dug, called Saint-Jean, Challant and Arolla, which follow the slope of the cultivation channels, descend for about 150 meters and are used for service activities such as the handling of extracted material, miners and the removal of water that flood most of the tunnels up to the level of the stream.
In correspondence with the last two, hydraulic turbines are also installed, driven by a channel diverting the water of the stream, to ensure the operation of the pumps.
Wooden walkways allow one to cross the stream and also the transport of material using carts directly to the overlooking factories.
