Ingresso della miniera

Near the nineteenth-century Ghiaccia is the eco-museum site dedicated to the Mines. It is a reconstruction of the entrance to an extraction tunnel, with wooden framework, cart, and rails.

The site was created through the collaboration of the Alta Valle di Susa Forestry Consortium, which managed the technical design, the Municipality of Salbertrand, which granted the use of its own land, the Ente di Gestione Aree Protette Alpi Cozie, which implemented it with its internal personnel, the Ecomuseo dell’Alta Val Sangone and the Municipality of Coazze, which provided the rails and the mining cart, and Ferruccio Rey, who contributed his experience and provided technical guidance for the setup.

A site dedicated to mining in Salbertrand describes an activity that has extensively involved the local population over the centuries, adding a new piece to the documentation of material culture and local history.

A mysterious atmosphere surrounds stories of discoveries of lead, gold, and silver mines among the rocks of Seguret in the medieval era. Maps and documents attest to the presence of various extraction sites exploited starting from 1700 in the Salbertrand area. However, it's only in the first half of the twentieth century, during the autarky period, that local mines provided significant output, ensuring a good employment component. The first prominent company involved in exploiting the Salbertrand mines is the Dinamite Nobel Società Anonima di Avigliana, which starting from 1906 began extracting pyrite (iron disulfide, a basic element for explosive production) at Grange Himbert, in the current territory of the Gran Bosco Natural Park.

From 1938, the Società Anonima FIAT Sezione Ferriere Piemontesi started exploiting a hematite mine (iron oxide) in Rio Secco, on the left side of the valley at 2180 meters above sea level. The Seguret site's activity progressed simultaneously with the Grange Himbert site on the right slope, along the trail leading to Montagne Seu at 1330 meters above sea level, where pyrite was extracted. The extracted material was sent to foundries in Turin.
The site manager was Mario Rey from Salbertrand. Around 80 men, half of whom were locals, were employed at the two sites. Among the Salbertrand workers involved in the mine's advancement at Grange Himbert were Ottavio Faure and Guido Jannon. Salbertrand still recalls the titanic effort made by Severino Jaime, Secondino Guiffre, Battista Longhi, and Mario Casse (a blacksmith at the Seguret mine) who carried the cable car's flywheel on their shoulders from Rio Secco, where it had arrived on a horse-drawn cart, all the way to the site without rest.

Texts from the Cahier n.27 of the Ecomuseo Colombano Romean “Viaure come un ours din quellou precipice! Cave e miniere dell’Alta valle della Dora” by Renato Sibille and Zeno Vangelista.