Rang-du-Fliers

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Coordinates: 50°25′06″N 1°38′26″E / 50.4183333333, 1.64055555556

Administration
Commune of Rang-du-Fliers
Location

Country	France
Region	Nord-Pas-de-Calais
Department	Pas-de-Calais
Arrondissement	Montreuil
Canton	Berck
Intercommunality	Communauté de communes Opale Sud
Mayor	José Collette
Statistics
Elevation	3 m–48 m (avg. 11 m)
Land area^¹	10,47 km²
Population^² (2004)	3 822
- Density	344/km²
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	62688/ 62180
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel) only counted once.

Rang-du-Fliers is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais département in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.

1 Geography
2 History
3 Population
4 Places of interest
5 Personalities linked with the commune
6 Twin city
7 See also
8 External links
9 Notes

[edit] Geography

A village located on the Côte d'Opale (the Opal Coast), 4 miles (6km) from the beach and 5 miles (8km) southeast of Montreuil-sur-Mer on the D917 road.

[edit] History

Rang-du-Fliers became a commune in 1870, having been previously only a hamlet of Verton. The population of this hamlet lived poorly amid the marshes and fields that had formed over the centuries behind the dunes. Boatmen, weavers, labourers and a few tenants occupying the cob houses built on land by the edge of the many drainage ditches.
"Rang" comes from Rin meaning canal or "Tringue" a drainage trench (this term is still found in Great Tringue, north of the town. "Fliers" comes from the Flemish Vliet which means "Little River". Hence the name "Rein-Vliet" (Rang-du-Fliers). This etymology has shifted somewhat over time, so we find Reng-du-Fliez in an entry of at the castle of Beaurain dated 1633, "Le Rang Deflier" on a map of 1790 and "Le Rang d’Effliers" on a military map of 1830.
The future of Rang-du-Fliers turned in the middle of the 19th century with the construction of the railway line from Paris to Calais. In 1848, the mayor of Verton refused the building of a station in the town because of alleged pollution, and it was decided instead to build it at Rang-du-Fliers.
The railway station rapidly took on a importance, especially when a sugar mill was built in 1858 and the commune enjoyed ever-growing prosperity, employing up to 800 people in the years before 1914 during the beet campaigns.
Since 1867, the village of Rang-du-Fliers had everything to make a commune: a church (1864), a priest, a cemetery, a station, a school and a factory that encouraged more and more workers to settle there. The idea of separating from Verton had its way, helped by the lack of interest shown by the Verton council. After two petitions and many heated debates, Rang-du-Fliers was elevated to separate commune status by imperial decree on the 17th July 1870.