STALDEN ELECTRICITY PLANT

Located about 4 km south of Visp, on the territory of the municipality of Stalden, the Neubrück bridge was an important passage from the Rhone valley to Zermatt, Saas and the passes to Italy (Col d’Antrona, Monte Moro, Theodul…). This bridge, named Ritibrücke, was built in 1599 by Hans Pinella. The small chapel in the middle of the bridge was added in 1727. On the right side of the valley, immediately east of the bridge, is the beautiful baroque chapel of the Immaculate Conception, also dating from 1727, restored between 1979 and 1981. In 1922 a new bridge was built about ten meters further downstream.

In this picture I took the left half of a stereo shot on glass plate by my uncle Carl Abächerli in 1929 and I superimposed on the right picture a picture of today. This is a view of the chapel and the bridge taken from the right side of the Vispa river, looking west. What is immediately obvious is the cantonal road in the foreground, which did not exist in 1929: until the 1960’s the traffic to Stalden and the valleys passed over the new Neubrück bridge (not visible here, just 10 m to the right of the picture) and continued on the road visible on the right side of the picture (thus on the left side of the valley). The unpaved road in the lower left corner only led to the Ackersand power plant, which supplied energy to the Lonza factory in Visp and which is shown in the picture behind the church tower.