Pra Loup is a fairly young resort which combines winter snow and summer greenery with 300 sunny days per year!
Pra Loup, the pearl of the Southern Alps
Located in the department of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (04) and jewel in the crown of the Uvernet-Fours commune. 3 minutes from Barcelonnette in the Ubaye Valley, surrounded by many famous mountain passes, such as la Cayolle (2240 m), Allos (2247 m) and the Restefond-la Bonnette pass (2715 m) the highest road in Europe ...
The etymology of Pra Loup
Pra Loup, roughly translates as a contraction of Pra (the old word for meadow) and Loup (wolf), hence 'Wolf's Meadow'. Inhabitants of Pr Loup are called Pra Loupiens.
From the hamlet to the ski resort, there is only one history
The Molanès hamlet, already existed in 900 B.C. Shepherds from Liguria settled there, living off sheep's milk and animals that they hunted, and living in rustic thatched huts.
In the 12th century, the Chalaisien monks who came from Laverq built 4 buildings; the church, the school, the priory and the presbytery.
From the 14th to the 17th century farms and inns were built, pastoralism began to develop.
La Malune, the first hamlet towards Les Agneliers was populated by two families until 1920, but sadly it didn't expand due of a lack of water. Although its inhabitants had found an ingenious, but archaic, system to exploit a natural spring: building a wood pipe of 500m with hollowed out tree-trunks: "the bournéous" which can be seen in the museum of the Valley in Jausiers.
In Pra Loup 1600, there was only one inhabited farm at the time of WW1: the auberge of Pra Loup, which was completely self-sufficient with its windmill and oven.
At the end of the 50's, Pierre Grouès, philanthropist and doctor, had the idea to create a ski resort to develop the village. He enlisted the help of the best specialists of the time: Emile Allais, famous French Alpine skier and Honoré Bonnet, illustrious coach of the Alpine skiing French team.
In 1960, the resort started to take shape. Instead of the 3000 beds that the resort should have had, Honoré Bonnet suggested a capacity of 10000 beds for profitability reasons. From the summit of Pegueiou, he indentified the ideal location and also the possibility of joining up with Les Agneliers. This eventually became the link with the Foux d'Allos, which opened in 1977. At the instigation of Michel Lantelme, mayor of Allos and of Bruno Vaginay, mayor of Uvernet-Fours, this skiable domain became one of the the biggest in the Southern Alps.
Thus, Pra Loup and the Val d'Allos have entered into the exclusive club of resorts descibed as "Grand Domaines", those which allow you to ski more than 180 km of pistes. The combined domain is called "l'Espace Lumière'
Pra Loup sits above the village and commune of Uvernet-Fours.
Uvernet derives from the Latin Hibernatus, a word expressing the difficult climatic conditions due to its geographical location. Uvernet was created in 1970 after the division of the territory of Barcelonnette. In 1973, the communes of Uvernet and of Fours merged to become Uvernet-Fours.
During the winters of the18th century, the inhabitants of the hamlets Uvernet and Fours couldn't harvest the grain necessary for their subsistence, instead they worked in the two silk mill factories which could employ up to 100 people. In summer, women hawked their wears, an activity very spread throughout the Ubaye Valley, while their husbands worked in the fields. |
