For a long time a physical and mental frontier, the river Isle, with its navigability and its spanning allowed by the construction of bridges in the 1830s, was a major factor in the opening up to modernity of the territories it crosses.
The improvement of the main and secondary roads from the 1840s onwards, and above all the arrival of the railway linking Bordeaux and Périgueux in 1856, accelerated this process of integration of the valley, but also indirectly of the forest plateaux of its basin into the ever more distant circuits of trade in products.
The mobility and daily life of the inhabitants were thus profoundly changed. These new means of transport, ever faster, allow a new dynamic between the city and the countryside, but also a new perception of space-time in everyday life.
Illustrations :
– Photograph of the train from Périgueux to Mussidan station in the summer of 1898. Photograph by André Rigaillaud. Private collection.
– Photograph of the train station of Périgueux in July 1899. Photo André Rigaillaud. Private collection.
– Photograph of the Ribérac train in 1898 in Mussidan station. Photo André Rigaillaud. Private collection.
– Postcard of the Mussidan station platforms around 1910. (© Musée André Voulgre)
– Postcard of the Isle, the road and the railway at Saint Front de Pradoux around 1900. (© Musée André Voulgre)
– Postcard of the Mussidan bridge around 1910. (© Musée André Voulgre)
– Postcard of a railway crossing in Mussidan in the 1920s. (© Musée André Voulgre)