Le Roux is built on a saddle of Mountain Gardiole, mid slope, above the confluence of two rivers du Bouchet and Golon (see "Bouchet valley"). It is part of the town shelter. It has long been the capital of a parish dedicated to St. John the Baptist and includes the hamlets of Pra-Roubaud, the Alveyo La Montet. S in the nineteenth, the village had about three hundred inhabitants. The plaque in front of the village church and commemorating the war dead of 1914-1918 includes two names, which gives an idea of the size of the population at the beginning of this century and that can be evaluated at 240 population, since only 5% of the population Queyras - young men - were killed during the five years of war.
During the second half of the twentieth century, the village has experienced two tragedies: war and depopulation. In 1940, the Italian army had occupied the houses were looted. The Roussin were forced to find refuge elsewhere in the villages of the Queyras and remained free until Ardeche. In 1944 the village was the scene of heavy fighting between the army goumiers Marshal's June and the Germans. A plaque on the old school shows. The German army, after Italy had renounced war, installed batteries firing on the border, and destroyed half the village, the church and especially the beautiful tower, whose spire was forty feet high. After the war, the destroyed houses were rebuilt Township High a little further down and a little farther east, in the face of the mountain exposed to winds blowing malaure (meaning, in Franco-Provençal, " ill winds ") and named it Malaurette.
The second tragedy was the rural exodus that accelerated after the war.
In the first edition, published in 1964, the Queyras General A. William, analyzing the depopulation affected then the upper valley of the Guil (local shelter and Ristolas) provided that in the short term, the village might not be inhabited in the summer and knowing the fate that had been one of Escoyères, La Montet and Valpreveyre. It seems that in the late 1960s, the prefecture of Gap had the intention to downgrade the road connecting the village shelter, which would have meant she would no longer be plowed in winter and more maintained. In 1972, only seven or eight people lived in the village permanently.
In the late 1970s, everything changed. In the third edition of Queyras, published in 1985, "revised and updated", General Guillaume wrote at p 173:
"The villages of Ristolas and Roux were threatened with the same fate (that is to say drop) despite the rebuilding, thanks to war damage, houses destroyed during the hostilities the houses being rebuilt rented to holidaymakers. Only tourism gives them life today. "
must qualify what the general said William: it is not only tourism that saved the village, but the creation of business, traditional or otherwise, who are not only partly related to tourism. In the early 1960s, the family C *, whose ancestors settled in for Roux several centuries, opened his large farm in a hotel, now closed. In 1974, a dozen young people from the city and having a tertiary education, have formed a community that has lasted a decade and have revived a farm producing milk, cheese, honey. Two families have set up small businesses, one producing carved furniture, the other natural products from plants. A large farm reconstruction was converted into a gite. Many young people working with homeless or in other villages have bought or rented a house. The village is most threatened abandonment: in fact, it now has more than fifty permanent residents.
In this village that the writer, Ms. Meyer-Moyne, situated action of one of his novels, published in 1995, Passions Queyras (see "writers Queyras).
