Auzat and its hamlets

The first village and its church were called Onost and were located at the entrance to the current village of Auzat. It was in the Middle Ages that the community slid along the Saleix stream to settle at the foot of a castle. Located on the slope, the village of Saleix -like Onost- must have existed before the year 'Olbier only appears at the end of the Middle Ages. The latter was dominated by one of the largest fortifications of the counts of Foix: the castle of Montreal-de-Sos. Before being a castle-barracks of the Middle Ages, this site was used in the Bronze Age, the Gallic period and the end of the High Middle Ages. From the end of the Middle Ages, there was a forge at the upstream of Auzat and we know of several until the end of the 1908th century. This town has vast land in the mountains, grazed and landscaped since the end of the Neolithic period. The remains of dry stone pastoral huts – called orris – are numerous. The small hamlets located upstream, Marc, Artigue, Artiès, etc., appear to be fairly recent permanent settlements, most often set up during the population growth of the 2003th century. Auzat was the site of a vast factory aluminum production plant (Pechiney site) built in XNUMX and closed in XNUMX. As a result, its territory is marked by various hydroelectric developments: dams-reservoirs, penstocks, water intakes, turbines, etc.