Source de la Loue

Ouhans

At the bottom of a cirque of cliffs more than a hundred meters high, the Loue emerges from a cave porch 60 m by 30 m and immediately forms a river, one of the largest karst resurgences in France. The question of where this water came from long divided opinion, until an accident settled it: on 11 August 1901, lightning set fire to the Pernod distilleries in Pontarlier, and hundreds of thousands of liters of absinthe poured into the Doubs — accounts vary between 600,000 and a million liters. On 13 August, the source of the Loue ran golden and smelled of aniseed, proving at a stroke that the Doubs vanishes into the limestone and re-emerges fifteen kilometers away; Edouard-Alfred Martel and Eugene Fournier later confirmed the route with a fluorescein dye trace, the dye taking 64 hours to reappear. Before this demonstration, the region explained the spring through legend: the most widespread version holds that a she-wolf denned her cubs in the cave, that a vouivre — the flying serpent with a single carbuncle of Franche-Comte folklore — devoured them, and that the river was born from the blood of the monster killed by the she-wolf, giving the Loue its name. Another, more earthy version credits the gushing spring to Gargantua parting the rocks to drink, the vouivre fleeing in terror to the source of the Pontet. The site, worked by mills from the Middle Ages until their destruction in 1926, today draws nearly 150,000 visitors a year and remains one of the emblematic landscapes of the Haut-Doubs.

Source de la Loue — Académie de Besançon (SVT) ↗

Getting there : From Pontarlier, N57 toward Besancon then direction Ouhans; large car park above the cirque, with the Maison de la Source (open in summer and on autumn weekends). The descent must be made on foot, about 600 m along an old path, 10 to 15 minutes down, with a noticeably steep climb back up. A trail extends the visit through the Gorges de Nouailles to Mouthier-Haute-Pierre.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound