Lotten Valley

image author: wikipedia.org

In west-eastern direction, first the Stiepeler stream, then the Lottenbach run through the valley. The Lottenbach has a length of 3,5 km and flows at Lake Kemnade into the Ruhr respectively in the Oelbach. Its inlets are Voßkuhlbach and Kalwesbach.
The valley is sparsely populated and is formed by meadows and oak-beech mixed woodlands.

The Lotten Valley is known for its amphibians, among them water frogs, common toads, smooth newts, Apline newts and fire salamanders. Bird species are tawny owl, spotted woodpecker, green woodpecker and lesser spotted woodpecker.

It is assumed, that the name goes back to Lotte (Wesrphalian for mill). There were at least two mills, one of those on the level of the grange Grünendiek, another on the level of the colliery Klosterbusch until 1918. Another assumption is, that the valley is named after the Lutten, which were relocated to the meadow valley of the Stiepel stream by the colliery Julius Philipp in the year 1875, to reduce the water inflows in deep mining.

The road, which meanders through the whole valley goes back to the Lotten Valley rail, a former horse-drawn tram for the transport of hard coal, mined by the colliery, to the Ruhr river. This early railway route was designed around 1830 and ran on wooden rails. Some years ago, a former retaining wall was flushed out during a storm in the upper part of the valley; the archaeological findings were secured as ground monument and is open to the public today.

Around 1 km from the mouth into the Ruhr, there are traces of coal mining, which ended with the closure of the small colliery Emmaglück at the Julius Philipp mining gallery in 1959.

To win more grazing land and settlement areas, the stream was forced into a concrete channel and in the lower course even completely tubed. In 1997, staff of the Biological Station eastern Ruhr area in Herne and the Geographical Institut of the Ruhr-University Bochum, identified with measurements in the village and from land registry plans from the 19th-century, the old course of the stream. On the 7th of November 1997, around 200 school children from the high schools Schillerschule and Graf-Engelbert-Schule, with spade, shovel and hoe, on a stretch of at least 200 m, to bring the upper stream back to its original course. Then, typical bank-side trees (alder and willows) were planted.

The stream runs through a large pond and is part of the pond complex of the Botanical Garden Ruhr-University Bochum. The valley is known in Bochum for its diverse amphibian fauna. During the time of the toad migration, the only road is being closed annually, to provide protection to Natterjack toads and other endangered species for during the main migration time for the egg-laying from the 1st of March to the 15th of April. Local nature conservation associations have been engaged here since 1980.

The big quarry in the Lotten Valley is striking, the largest geological outcrop in Bochum, the Stockum saddle, where material for the filling of the dismantled beds were won for the colliery Klosterbusch. The botanical research areas are situated behind the former pithead baths. Situated here is also the largest interconnected forest land in Bochum, the Kalwes.

The Lotten Valley has several facilities of the Ruhr-University Bochum. The rooms of the former colliery Klosterbusch houses the teaching workshop for experimental archaeology of the faculty of historical studies. Here, stone processing, bronze casting and other techniques are being tested and researched. In the same building are also the test halls of the faculty of engineering.

(The original text stems from an article of the Free Encyclopaedia Wikipedia

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottenbach).