History of the Turf Route

 Here is a thorough account of the history of the Turf Route in Friesland.

---

## The Turf Route (Turfroute) of Friesland: A Deep History

### The World Beneath the Water

The landscape of southeast Friesland was not always the quiet, wooded country it appears today. For thousands of years, it was essentially uninhabitable — a vast, waterlogged expanse of raised bog and fen, growing millimetre by millimetre out of the wet Frisian soil. Since around 3,500 years ago, peat bogs developed along the western edge of the Drenthe Plateau, fed by humid west winds, rising temperatures, and heavy rainfall. Rising sea levels slowed the drainage of water, accelerating peat formation. Because the sea never quite reached De Alde Feanen (a key area along the later Turf Route), the peat there was left largely intact. [Np-aldefeanen](https://www.np-aldefeanen.nl/en/about-the-park/geschiedenis/)

That slow, ancient accumulation — compressed plant matter, half-formed coal, what the Dutch would later call *het bruine goud*, the brown gold — would eventually reshape this corner of Europe entirely.

---

### Peat as Fuel: The Energy of the Golden Age

To understand the Turf Route, you first have to understand what peat meant to the Netherlands. Energy demand rose significantly from the late 16th century onwards, when economic power shifted from Flanders and Brabant to Holland. Peat production in the low bogs of Holland and Utrecht could not keep pace with demand, and turf prices started rising. [LOW←TECH MAGAZINE](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil-fuels-in-pre-industrial-times.html)

The Dutch had possibly over 275,000 hectares of peat prior to commercial exploitation. Dutch peat was exceptionally accessible — compared to her European neighbours, the reserves were situated relatively close to the water table, meaning that canals could easily be built between the peatery and the consumer. [Daviskedrosky](https://blog.daviskedrosky.com/p/peats-cradle)

From the 1580s onwards, attention shifted to the somewhat higher-lying peat bogs in the northern provinces of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe — some 200 to 250 kilometres from Holland. There, total production during the seventeenth century rose to an average of almost 400 hectares per year. Most of the turf was exported to Holland. [LOW←TECH MAGAZINE](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil-fuels-in-pre-industrial-times.html)

The fuel was essential not just for warming homes, but for powering the industries of the Dutch Golden Age — breweries, brickworks, saltworks, sugar refineries — all burning peat dug from the northern bogs and carried south by barge.

---

### The Lords of the Peat: 1551 and the Birth of Heerenveen

The story of the Turf Route begins precisely on 24 July 1551, at a document signed by three men at the intersection of two newly dug canals in southeast Friesland.

In 1551, Heerenveen was founded as a peat extraction settlement by three noblemen: Wybrand van Dekema, a Frisian lord from Jelsum, and Jan van Cuyck and Foeyts, both from Utrecht. These proprietors established the Dekema-Cuyck-Foeyts Veencompagnie, the second-oldest peat company in Friesland, to systematically exploit local high peat bogs for fuel production. The initiative involved digging two primary canals into the peatlands to facilitate drainage and transport, enabling large-scale sod-cutting operations that supplied peat as a primary household and industrial fuel across the Dutch Republic. [Grokipedia](https://grokipedia.com/page/Heerenveen)

The village that grew around this enterprise came to be known as *heeren-van-het-veen* — "lords of the peat." Over time, this was shortened to Heerenveen. The village is the oldest peat mining settlement in the Netherlands. [Friesland](https://www.friesland.nl/en/locations/3588199945/heerenveen)

The company's structure set the template for everything that followed. The organization was kept under tight rein, with decision-making resting with a small number of people — the three founders. In principle, anyone who wanted to invest in peat digging at Heerenveen could buy shares. It resulted in a kind of pyramidal structure: a "general company" dealt with the infrastructure (the canal, the sluices); below this were the three heads, each with their own company, subdivided into numerous sub-companies. The way peat-digging was organized in Heerenveen was quickly followed by all peat-companies in the northern provinces. [OpenEdition](https://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/1344?lang=en)

---

### Digging the Waterways: 1630–1830

The canals that now form the Turf Route were not built all at once. The Friese Turfroute is a globally unique historic waterway — an extensive system of canals with locks and bridges in southeast Friesland that was dug between 1630 and 1830 for the removal of peat. Peat, dried turf, was an important fuel in the Netherlands until around 1900, when coal arrived. [Friesland Holland](https://www.frieslandholland.nl/turfroute-is-cultuurhistorie-die-plek-op-werelderfgoedlijst-verdient/)

In the high peat region of western Drenthe, Friesland and Overijssel, canals were dug between 1600 and 1670 to reach some 30,000 hectares of peat. In total, it is estimated that some 700 km of canals were built in the northern provinces specifically aimed at turf transport. A substantial number of them remain today, sometimes with surprising results — such as towns without roads. [LOW←TECH MAGAZINE](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil-fuels-in-pre-industrial-times.html)

The most important canal was the *Opsterlandse Compagnonsvaart*, running 34 kilometres from Gorredijk to Appelscha at the Drenthe border. The so-called *compagnons* — the cooperating peat bosses — organised peat extraction in the vast Frisian low and high fen areas around Heerenveen, Gorredijk, and Appelscha. [Friesland Holland](https://www.frieslandholland.nl/turfroute-is-cultuurhistorie-die-plek-op-werelderfgoedlijst-verdient/) The river Tjonger, flowing westward from Oosterwolde toward the former Zuiderzee, also formed a key artery of the system.

A distinctive technique arrived mid-period. Dredgers from Overijssel introduced the technique of peat dredging in 1751 in Friesland. Some decades later, Frisian dredgers introduced the technique to Groningen. [OpenEdition](https://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/1344?lang=en) This method — cutting peat below the waterline — was far more productive, but also far more destructive.

---

### The Human Cost: Bosses, Diggers, and Brown Gold

The turf trade created one of the starkest social landscapes in Dutch history. At the top, wealthy families grew extraordinarily rich. The turf trade made some of the major Frisian families quite rich. Their legacy — country estates with beautiful gardens and parks — can be seen at places like Bakkeveen, Oldeberkoop, Beetsterzwaag, and Oranjewoud. [Friesland](https://www.friesland.nl/en/routes/540000812/turfroute)

At the bottom, the peat workers lived in conditions of genuine hardship. The professional peat diggers lived mostly in small brick houses rented from the boss. The large group of labourers without a steady contract tended to live in primitive hovels made of sods, partly dug into the ground, well into the 20th century. [Geopark De Hondsrug](https://www.dehondsrug.nl/verhalen/veen/?lang=en) The living conditions in these turf huts were miserable — the rooms were badly heated, damp, and crawling with vermin. Residents of turf huts did not grow old. [HiSoUR](https://www.hisour.com/sod-house-29722/)

The peat company owners, meanwhile, cashed out and moved on. As soon as an area of peat was exhausted, the investors retreated. Reclamation was left to another category of people — mostly poor peasants' sons and farmhands seeking their own smallholding. Former peat diggers rarely became farmers after the phase of peat digging. [OpenEdition](https://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/1344?lang=en)

---

### Peak and Collapse: The 19th Century

The industry reached its frantic height in the mid-to-late 1800s. The year 1876 entered the records as the busiest year ever in terms of boat traffic. No fewer than 15,527 boats were counted on these waters — a considerable amount of manoeuvring required with those large peat ships. [Beleefhetlagenoorden](https://beleefhetlagenoorden.nl/de-turfroute/)

But the end was already visible. Peat was the most important fuel in the Netherlands until 1900, when coal arrived and little more could be earned from turf. The industry dried up. What remained was an extensive system of canals, bridges, and — because of the differences in elevation — twelve locks. [Beleefhetlagenoorden](https://beleefhetlagenoorden.nl/de-turfroute/)

In the province of Friesland, the underlying soil was not suited for agriculture, and peat digging resulted in large lakes which still exist today. [LOW←TECH MAGAZINE](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil-fuels-in-pre-industrial-times.html) Where the bogs had been, water filled in — some of those lakes now make up the national parks the Turf Route passes through, including the Alde Feanen.

---

### Afterlife: From Industrial Artery to Recreational Route

For most of the 20th century, the old turf canals were quiet and increasingly forgotten. Then, in 1974, a group of volunteers changed that.

Since the year of its founding in 1974, the foundation *De Nije Kompanjons* (The New Partners) has worked to keep the waterways open and to continually improve the facilities along the banks. Several times the route threatened to close — even quite recently. The foundation managed to prevent that each time. [Friesland Holland](https://www.frieslandholland.nl/turfroute-is-cultuurhistorie-die-plek-op-werelderfgoedlijst-verdient/)

The name *Nije Kompanjons* — New Partners — is a deliberate echo of the original *compagnons*, the peat bosses of the 17th century. Where those men organised the digging, these volunteers organised the revival.

The route they reopened follows two loops. The shorter Turf Route covers 105 kilometres through southeast Friesland; the longer route extends to 190 kilometres, crossing into Drenthe and Overijssel. In 2024 — the year the Turfroute turned fifty — travel writer Fokko Bosker and journalist Janneke Donkerlo researched the history of the route together and wrote a walking and cycling guide for it. [Zuidoostfriesland](https://www.zuidoostfriesland.nl/uitgelicht/turfroute)

---

### What the Route Carries Now

Today the Turf Route is navigable from mid-May to mid-September. Boats of up to 28 metres can travel it, passing through twelve locks and any number of small bridges — some operated by bridge-keepers on bicycles, some by the boaters themselves. The maximum speed is 6 kilometres per hour: slow enough to hear the reeds, the birds, the sound of the old landscape breathing.

The waterways pass through four national parks: the Drents-Friese Wold, the Dwingelderveld, the Alde Feanen, and the Weerribben. Along the banks stand the great country estates of the peat barons — Beetsterzwaag, Oranjewoud — and the peat colonies of the workers, now quiet villages. The Sudergemaal pumping station, built in 1924 — one of the first electric pumping stations in Friesland — is now part of the It Damshûs open-air museum in Nij Beets. [Friesland](https://www.friesland.nl/en/routes/540000812/turfroute)

There are calls for the Turfroute to be recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site — a globally unique system of hand-dug canals connecting fuel, economy, ecology, and social history across three provinces. [Friesland Holland](https://www.frieslandholland.nl/turfroute-is-cultuurhistorie-die-plek-op-werelderfgoedlijst-verdient/) Whether or not that recognition ever comes, what the canals hold is remarkable: the memory of an industry that powered a golden age and scarred a landscape, carved by hand across 200 years and now, quietly, given back to the water and the light.