Landes (department)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Landes | |
|---|---|
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| Coat of arms of the Landes department | |
| Location | |
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| Administration | |
| Department number: | 40 |
| Region: | Aquitaine |
| Prefecture: | Mont-de-Marsan |
| Subprefectures: | Dax |
| Arrondissements: | 2 |
| Cantons: | 30 |
| Communes: | 331 |
| President of the General Council: | Henri Emmanuelli |
| Statistics | |
| Population | Ranked 65th |
| -1999 | 327,334 |
| Population density: | 35/km² |
| Land area¹: | 9243 km² |
| ¹ French Land Register data, which exclude estuaries, and lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km². | |
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Landes (Occitan: Lanas) is a département in southern France.
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[edit] History
Landes is one of the original 83 départements that were created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from parts of the provinces of Guyenne and Gascony.
The Nobel Prize winning novelist François Mauriac set his novels in the Landes.
[edit] Geography
Landes is part of the current région of Aquitaine and is surrounded by the départements of Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Gers, and Pyrénées-Atlantiques, as well as the Atlantic Ocean on the west. With an area stretching over more than 9000 km², Landes is, after Gironde, the second largest department of the metropolitan French territory.
It is well known for the Côte d'Argent beach which is Europe's longest, and attracts many surfers to Mimizan and Hossegor each year.
[edit] Economics
In terms of agriculture, Landes is known for its large pine forests which are the raw material for a timber and resin industries in the region. The forests were planted in the early nineteenth century to prevent erosion of the region's sandy soil by the sea.
[edit] See also
- Cantons of the Landes department
- Communes of the Landes department
- Arrondissements of the Landes department
[edit] External links
- (French) Prefecture website
- (French) Conseil Général website
- (English) Landes at the Open Directory Project
