Geopark Municipalities

The name Hüttau is derived from the former smelting works in this region. In the first half of the 10th century, Salzburg Archbishop Pilgrim I sent a priest to the village, from which can be dated back that settlement began around this time. A copper smelting plant is mentioned in the annals around the year 1515. The copper mine next to the Larzenbach probably dates back to the 13th/14th century. It is first mentioned in documents in 1549. The copper pyrite extracted, containing approx. 151TP3 tonnes of copper, was processed in the "Ernst Hütte" near Niedernfritz. Records from the middle of the 16th century report around 150 employees in the Hüttau mining and smelting plant. This period also corresponded to the heyday of mining while the end was already approaching. 

The municipality of Bischofshofen is often referred to in the annals as the "cradle of the Pongau". The first traces of human activity date back to the 6th millennium BC. Since this time, today's municipal area has been an important settlement, mining and trading location as well as a cultural centre. The development of the region was decisively characterised by the mining of copper ores. With the rediscovery of the Mitterberg copper deposit in Mühlbach am Hochkönig and the start of mining in 1829, the smelter, which had been located in the narrow Mühlbach valley for almost 40 years, was moved to Außerfelden in Bischofshofen in 1885. Today's Mitterberghütten was the site of the smelting of copper ore from Mühlbach from 1887 to 1931.

The first documented mention of the village of Mühlbach as "Mulpach" dates back to 1350. Under Salzburg's Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach, the construction of the Sebastian Chapel began in 1519. Today, Mühlbach has an internationally recognised position as a millennia-old centre of copper mining in Europe. Traces and finds indicate that Mühlbach is a 1700-year-old prehistoric industrial centre that reached its heyday in the period from 2,000 to 300 BC. Slag dating back 4,000 years can be found at over 190 documented smelting sites. For around 2,000 years, the old mining industry of the Mühlbach's Mitterberg remained hidden from the public.

The first written mention of St. Veit and the parish was in a letter of donation from Salzburg's Archbishop Gebhard in 1074. From St. Veit as the "original and mother parish", priests went to Goldegg, St. Johann im Pongau, Dienten and the Gastein and Grossarl valleys as early as 910. Under Archbishop Firmian in 1831/32, 3,200 Protestant Christians from the St. Veit/Goldegg court, including many miners, were forced to leave the country because of their faith. They celebrated their last church service in their homeland at the Pfarriachstein chapel ("Fadlstoa Kapelle"), which still exists today. The Klingelberg was already home to a mining settlement at the turn of the Neolithic and Copper Age. Sunnpau copper was used to make tools, weapons and crockery 4,000 years ago. In the Bronze Age (2,000 to 1,300 BC), copper was needed to produce the shiny golden metal bronze.