A junction of merchants and travellers

Le Collet-de-Dèze was an important stopping-point on the diocese road from Chamborigaud to St Germain-de-Calberte. In the Cévennes, the building of roads suitable for wheeled traffic slowed down from the 16th century onwards, partly due to the King – as a means of bullying the local populations, which had converted to Protestantism – and partly due to the Cévenol communities, which did not wish to make it easier for royal troops to reach them by these new roads. At the end of the 19th century, the village was transformed and modified by new traffic arteries when the Route Nationale was opened and the railway arrived.