A brief history of Mont Blanc
Ownership of Mont Blanc’s summit has always been a bone of contention through the centuries, but it was finally sliced down the middle, right through the icecap in 1861, giving equal territories to Italy and France. The main towns of jurisdiction are the Italian town of Courmayeur and the French town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains. Switzerland is home to a large part of the massif, which is why you pass through all three countries while taking on the Tour du Mont Blanc walking circuit. Consequently, any political decisions regarding the future management of the Mont Blanc massif need to be approved by all three countries.
Read more The first inn was built in Chamonix in 1770 to host wealthy tourists coming to admire the mountain’s Mer de Glace, still a popular site today. The mountains were already home to hunters, who then became guides catering to the growing numbers of mountaineers wanting to discover the peaks. The first recorded climb of Mont Blanc was by Jacque Balmat and Michel Paccard on August 8, 1786 and since then the mountain has never looked back. Today, over 20 000 climbers ascend to the summit every year, leading to problems of overcrowding and queues to traverse the final access ridge. Mountaineering tourism continued to thrive throughout the 1800’s, including an expedition to the summit by the future US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1886. The 19th century saw hotels being built, the creation of the Compagnie des Guides in 1821 and, much later, the opening of the railway line between St Gervais Le Fayet and Chamonix in 1901.
Transport development was, and still is, key to tourism development around Mont Blanc. The Montenvers Mer de Glace cog railway opened in 1908, but Mont Blanc’s big coup de theatre was hosting the first Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix in 1924. The growth of the valley as the leading winter sports destination in the world led to the development of Glacier cable cars, which no longer exist, but also Planpraz, Brevent, the Aiguille du Midi and the Flégère. All of which still do exist, and thrive. The Mont Blanc Tunnel, which stretches for 11.5km right under the massif was constructed between 1957 and 1965, linking France and Italy.
Mont Blanc is always the subject of challenges, with paragliders landing on the summit in 2003, and crazy climbers even carrying a hot tub up to the summit in 2007. However, it has also seen too many tragedies, with experienced climbers and less experienced perishing in this vicarious landscape over the years. There were also two air crashes in 1950 and 1966, both involving Air India flights descending to Geneva and when, respectively, 48 and 117 people lost their lives.
Mont Blanc is also the subject of new challenges, conservation wise. It is hard to believe that Mont Blanc is not actually a highly protected landscape. It doesn’t have national park status, for example. In France, it was designated a ‘site classé’ in 1951, which prevents development, camping and supervises amenities, but it does not have a conservation strategy that is co-managed by the three countries, something that would exist with a higher form of protected landscape designation. What it does have, however, is a strong group of mountaineering, environmental and conservation experts from three countries, who came together in 1991 to form Espace Mont Blanc. Two of its priorities of late are to seek international protective status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and to perfect a management plan for the massif which will be controlled by European judicial statute. Indeed the former won’t be achieved until the latter is put into practice. So in the meantime, for the future of Mont Blanc, it is a case of watch this very big space.
