History
Around 1700 BC, a Bronze Age moor path made of alder and oak trunks was built in the north-eastern part, the Darlaten Moor. For centuries, peat was dug by hand in the Great Moor and used as fuel by the rural population. From the 1920s onwards, peat mining began on a larger scale. Around 1925, the Bremen merchant Werner Most founded a peat mining company in Uchte, which ceased production at the end of the 1990s. In 1931, Wintershall AG founded the peat works Gewerkschaft Uchte - Torfwerke on Fuchsberg near Darlaten, which is still in operation today. It operates a field railway in the moor, which is used to transport the mined peat away. The factory building was destroyed in a fire in 1978. Another company that is no longer in operation today was the Essern peat company. In 1959, a moor fire broke out in the Great Moor. Until the early 1960s, peat was dug by hand and stacked in large piles.