ORSCHWILLERBOURG

The origin of the word Orschwillerbourg, German Orschwillerberg, There is nothing to do with the village of Orschwiller in the Lower Rhine. This name comes from the old village of Alschwiller (or Alswiller) established on this site before being razed to XIII^nd century. Over the centuries, the word Alschwillerberg, or « hill of Alschwiller », gradually transformed on the cadastres to finally become OrschwillerbergThen Orschwillerbourg.

The Orschwillerbourg is a small hill between the Soultz plateau and the village of Hartmannswiller below. On a slight slope (about 5%) and facing south, it is bounded by a stream in its upper part and by pastures and fields in its lower part. Its average altitude is 260 metres, 100 metres lower than the Mittelbourg, which is only a kilometre and a half away.

Very different from the soils of Mittelburg and Hornstein, that of Orschwillerburg is indeed much younger. Formed in the Pleistocene era (-2.5 to -0.1 million years), it is composed of slender scrambles, probably deposited after the melting of the glacier that occupied the Rimbach valley during the ice periods. There are small fragments of rolled sandstone and quartz pebbles. This sandstone returned to the state of sand was then covered by silts from the erosion of nearby mountains and accumulated on this hill. The result is a deep but rather light soil of a marno-grey type with limono-grey, rich but with a rather weak water reserve.