The history of Les Arcs takes a bit of piecing together - the pages here try to provide something of a guide.
The first is a video from a great series of documentaries about grands travaux. You can find it on the Daily Motion site here. (There's also an account of the building of the Tignes dam as part of the project to meet France's post-war electricity needs).
It covers quite a bit of ground, including:
- the mountain before Les Arcs - very little activity
- the compulsory purchase of properties by the developers (Blanc, Godino et al. Roger Godino is interviewed at 7')
- the design of the apartments at Arc 1600, which looked to avoid "vis-a-vis" in terms of the flats being overlooked etc (11'45)
- a tour with some of the original proprieteres at Arc 1800 (14')
- the story of Radio Les Arcs (17')
- an interview with Bernard Jafe, one of the original commercants, who runs the photo shop next to Chez Boubou at Arc 1800 (19')
- archive shots of a family in one of the Perriand-designed interiors at Arc 1800 (22')
- "Le Disneyworld" at Arc 1950 (24')
- the Les Arcs pistes today: some 250,000 skiers a year
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| The prefabricated bathroom/kitchen units designed by Charlotte Perriand helped meet the target of getting the Arc 1800apartments built between May1 and November 20 |
The second exhibit, from the www.alpissime.com site, pays homage to the early proprieteres of Les Arcs.
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| Pierra Menta, Arc 1800 |
Some headlines:
- many of the early buyers bought the flats off-plan
- the personal touch of Robert Blanc played a role in some cases, for example bringing some of the people he met in Courchevel over to invest in Les Arcs
- Arc 1600 remains 80% proprietere-owned
- the early lifts included the now-dismantled Gollet lift at 1600, as well as a steep drag following the course of the current Comborciere chair
- helicopters used to drop off off-piste skiers at the Altiport, these being the days before the ban on heli-skiing
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