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Grands Goulets

Saint-Martin-en-Vercors, Italy

Grands Goulets

Les Grands Goulets (French language: The Great Bottlenecks) is a gorge in the western part of the Vercors Massif, located in the department of Drôme in Southeastern France. The gorge forms the head of the Vernaison Valley. Between 1844 and 1851, the Grands-Goulets Road (Route Départementale RD 518)

was constructed, a "balcony road" built into the sheer limestone cliffs of the gorge to link the Pont-en-Royans area to the Vercors plateau at Échevis. The single-track road has numerous tunnels and few passing-places and was formerly popular with tourists. During the Second World War, the plateau became a stronghold of a French Resistance group called the Maquis du Vercors. On 22 January 1944, a column of 300 German troops arrived at the Grands Goulets on a punitive expedition. A small force of Maquisards attempted to block their progress but were either outgunned or outflanked by Gebirgsjäger Alpine troops at each blocking position that they established. When the coloumn reached Échevis, they burned the village in retaliation for the ambush of a German staff car a few days earlier. A plaque at La Chapelle-en-Vercors commemorates the twenty Maquisards who were killed in the fighting. The...

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