Hidden in the Poiana Ruscă Mountains, the land of the forests depicts the villages where the time seems to have stopped in place, but together with the natural charm of places, the guests of the region find places completely out of the ordinary.
Meria village. Photo: Daniel Guță. TRUTH
Less than 5,000 people live in the villages of the Poiana Ruscă Mountains, settlements with a long history, difficult to access in the past and surrounded by large forests that gave the region the name “Land of the forest”.
Some historians showed that the area of the forests was populated from ancient times, when the rural settlements on the baskets of the Poiana Ruscă Mountains gravitated around the Roman colony Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, the city established by Emperor Trajan and became the capital of the Dacian province of the Danube.
Villages with ancient reminiscences
In the Poiana Ruscă mountains, archaic, native populations, dedicated to animal husbandry and natural resources, have continued to live: forest, iron and marble. In this isolated area, in time, the community of forests, one of the most distinct in Romania, was formed, said the ethnologist Romulus Vuia, who has long researched their settlements and communities.
“From the peak of Poiana Ruscăi (1,359 meters), radially descends the five peaks of the forests, separated by deep valleys, towards the Mureş Valley, Cerna and Streiului. These five peaks, with their smooth surfaces, forms the core of the forest region, surrounded by the tall belt, and the t. Piezios. informs Romulus Vuia, in the volume “The popular port of the forests in the Hunedoara region” (1962).
The traditional port of the forests resembled that of the Dacians, observed Romulus Vuia.
“We cannot help but find the great resemblance between the Dacian clothing on Trajan’s Column and the current port of the Haţeg Country.”he wrote.
The picturesque mountain area in western Romania, famous for its small archaic villages, now largely affected by aging and depopulation, for the vast forests that cover the mountains around them and for the traditional port kept by some locals, stands out through a few rarities.
The giant crater in the middle of the village of Ghelari
In the middle of the village of Ghelari (video) from the land of the forest, the former iron career is depicted in the form of a huge crater, over 200 meters deep, reddish, partially covered by vegetation. The mining exploitation, started here in the 19th century and closed in the 2000s, completely transformed the area.
After closing the mine, the old career, which keeps many industrial ruins, some old in the 19th century, is avoided by locals due to risks. The land is unstable, slopes and collapses take place, and several deep mine wells have remained unprotected.
“This place that was a true ants of people and cars, trains and funicular, no longer showing the mining area. But there are areas where the earth is over, the boulders often fall, and on the bottom of the career and in its surroundings there have remained deep wells in which the inattentive ones risk to fall and could not fall and could not be able to fall.”tells a former miner from Ghelari.
Career in Ghelari. Photo: Daniel Guță
Nearby, an imposing construction watches over the giant crater. The “Cathedral of the Forest”, one of the highest churches in Romania, was erected in the 1930s, and its white towers reach almost 50 meters.
Cathedral in Ghelari. Photo: Daniel Guță
The church was affected in the past by the instability of the basement caused by the surrounding mining galleries. It has been consolidated in the last decades and has remained the spiritual symbol of the land of the forests.
Marble road, pride of Alun village
Over the hills, about ten kilometers from Ghelari, the village hail inhabited by several families also attracts the travelers’ eyes through a unique thing.
The settlement with about 50 uninhabited houses, with a marble church built in the 1930s, and one, older than two centuries, from wood, is at the end of a marble road that climbs into the hill on which the village of the marble quarry was set up.
“This road was built in the ’60s – ’70, so that its solid structure allows the marble blocks, of 5 to 10 tons, can be safely descended on the slope of the hill”, He remembered one of the few locals.
Pitite villages after mountains
Not only the vast forests, but also the way in which several villages in the land of the forests were positioned have made them difficult to access those who did not know the area. Villages like Meria, Cerișor, Aănieș, Ulm (video), The old woman, the red face and the Cherni meadow were founded in isolated, hard-to-reach areas, where people have been dealing, for centuries, with the breeding of animals.
The mountain settlements, hidden behind the steep hills and surrounded by forests, have in the past offered refuge to those who were running out of the way.
Hidden behind the hills, the village of Meria, located at almost 1,000 meters altitude, is one of the hardest to find. Until the middle of the last century, there was no access road, and the connection with the rest of the world was made through ancient paths, including a route that some locals call the “trail of haiduces”. It passes through a rocky area, where the stone formations remind of human faces and offers a view over the Cerna meadow.
“It is an old path, less used now, on which people went to Meria. From the rocks on the hill, you can see the whole meadow, but few know this place. The path is sometimes used by those who have animals, but only to climb the hills. It is a lot to go to Meria, even on this short, there are better roads,” The story of a local from Lunca Cernii de Jos, the settlement at the foot of the mountains.
And the Cernii de Jos meadow was for a long time isolated. In the 1960s, at the construction of the road to the commune, a tunnel was dug through the mountain to remove its settlements from isolation.
Legend has it that Meria was once the hiding place of the haiduces and fugitives, who descended into the land of Hațeg and in Banat to prey, then retreated to the safety of the codes. According to the priest Jacob Radu, in 1909, the authorities intervened, asking the inhabitants to establish their steadfast households and to give up the life of the prison.
“Once, it is said, it has ended this way of life a little honest, by the armed power sent over them. The soldiers surrounded the village from all sides and the inhabitants were summoned to make steadfast homes and to start a peaceful life, otherwise they will be treated as the evil and punished the village. by raising cattle ”, the priest Jacob Radu reported.
After this change, Meria became an agricultural and forestry community. It was electrified in the 1960s, and the access road was recently paved.
The village that hid a secret military base
Seven kilometers above Meria, on one of the ridges of the Poiana Ruscă Mountains, the village of Vadu Dobrii, founded in the 19th century, experienced a period of intense activity during the operation of the iron mine, until the end of the 1980s.
Now, although it is permanently inhabited by about three families, it has remained a place for both its patriarchal charm, but also for the remains of a former anti -aircraft military base (video), nearby, equipped in the past with Soviet missiles.
The former anti -aircraft military unit worked from the ’50s until the early 2000s, in the isolated place surrounded by forests and almost inaccessible due to heavy roads, but also that no civilian in the area was allowed to approach it.
The only missiles were activated, according to former military, on the evening of December 25, 1989, during the Revolution. Then, on the screens of the radiolocation stations, dozens of unidentified air targets appeared, and from the divisions of Sânpetru-Haţeg and Vadul Dobrii-“Valea Ursului”, rockets were launched, which were self-destroyed, because they had not encountered any “target” of those viewed on the radar.
Components of one of the missiles fell over the hills, in the courts of the people of Lunca Cernii de Jos, nearby. One of them was discovered in 2021, buried in a hill, above a deserted house.
Since 2003, the former anti -aircraft unit from Vadu Dobrii, Hunedoara, has been closed and left in preservation.
