Several families animate the hamlets of the Poiana Ruscă Mountains, located in the wild land on the border of Hunedoara and Caraș-Severin counties. People waited in vain for the modernization of a road that would have taken them out of isolation.
Minuc, one of the few remaining hamlets in the Poiana Ruscă Mountains. Photo: Daniel Guță. TRUTH
The most isolated hamlets in the Poiana Ruscă Mountains could have been saved from extinction, believe the few locals, if their forest roads had been modernized with minimal investment.
Minuc Onesc is among the few locals left in the Căpățâni hamlet in Hunedoara (video), hidden in a wild land in the Poiana Ruscă Mountains on the border of Hunedoara, Timiș and Caraș-Severin counties.
About three families live in the hamlet that does not appear on maps and whose name is only known to the locals from nearby settlements. In the past, says Minuc, the settlements established around Vârful Rusca (1,355 meters), were much more animated.
“People lived by raising animals, some worked the land, growing potatoes, others in the forest, and many were able to work in the complex ore mines and the Ruschița marble quarry, connected to the area by several roads”says Minuc, also a former miner at Ruschița, until 1992.
The metal mines in Rusca Montană commune were closed in the 1990s, and the marble quarry in Ruschița and the forestry operations in the area no longer have as many employees as in the past.
Over time, the settlements in the Poiana Ruscă Mountains, located on the peaks that separate Hunedoara and Caraș-Severin counties, became depopulated, and places like Dosul Alunului, Dosul Odăilor, Preveciori, Căpățâni, Gura Bordului and Vadu Dobrii (video) are still animated by a few people.
In Hunedoara, for over a decade, a county road on the Cernei valley from Hunedoara has been modernized and transformed into a road that stops in the forest, at the end of the Lunca Cernii de Jos commune, where it continues with a sector of about 7–8 kilometers, not modernized, to the village of Rusca Montană in Caraș-Severin.
The marble road, awaited for over a decade
This road, also called the “marble road”, because it leads to the Ruschița marble quarry, is still used by the locals of isolated villages in the Poiana Ruscă Mountains to reach the neighboring county, but due to its condition, it cannot be traveled by cars.
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Căpățâni hamlet from Hunedoara Photo Daniel Guță THE TRUTH (77) JPG
“The road is asphalted all the way to the border with Caraș, but those from Caraș-Severin have not continued the work on the road. Even with the tractor, we climbed hard from Ruschița, up here, to Căpățâni, where we are building a cabin, because we want to continue living here. I was born here, grew up, went to school, and my father and grandfather are buried here. I want to cry why these places ended up”, says Minuc.
Below the hamlet of Căpățâni from Hunedoara, the roads from the village of Negoiu from Hunedoara (video) have been asphalted in recent years, so the settlement has become more accessible. But even here, in the village located about 40 kilometers from Hunedoara, the number of locals has decreased in recent years.
The new roads also stop at the border of the county and the commune of Lunca Cernii de Jos in Hunedoara, from where travelers can continue on their way to Rusca Montană and Ruschița (video).
In the past, locals say, most people did their shopping in the neighboring villages of Caraș-Severin, where until the 2000s, several thousand people worked in the iron, copper, zinc, lead and uranium mines and in the Ruschița marble quarry.
The Rusca Montană mining center went into decline in the 90s, and many families left the two villages of the commune. The “marble road” still has to wait until it will be modernized, according to the authorities of Rusca Montană.
Sergiu Toma, the mayor of the commune of Rusca Montană, recently reported that the former forest road recently entered the administration of the town hall of the commune of Rusca Montană (video), and the commune submitted a financing project, to the National Investment Company, for the rehabilitation of about three kilometers of the road – the most difficult sector of the route, located on the border of Hunedoara and Caraș-Severin counties.
