The Aatal (Aa Valley) is a narrow, steep valley of about depth surrounded by forests. It is situated between the towns of
Wetzikon
Wetzikon is a small town in the Zurich Highlands (Zürcher Oberland) area of Switzerland, in the district of Hinwil in the canton of Zürich.
Geography
The municipality Wetzikon has an area of . Of this area, 42.4% is used for agricultural pu ...
and
Uster
Uster ( High Alemannic: ''Uschter'') is a town and the capital of the Uster District in the Swiss canton of Zürich.
It is the third largest town in the canton of Zürich, with almost 35,000 inhabitants, and is one of the twenty largest towns ...
in the
canton of Zürich,
Switzerland.
Through the valley flows the river
Aabach, which starts at the effluence of the southern end of the
Pfäffikersee
Pfäffikersee (or ''Lake Pfäffikon'') is a lake in the canton of Zürich, Switzerland, near the town of Pfäffikon. It is 2.5 km long and 1.3 km wide at the middle. The lake was created in the last ice age when a moraine blocked off th ...
and then enters Wetzikon where the river makes a U-turn in the middle of the town towards a southwestern direction before it enters the valley. After the valley of about the Abbach enters Uster, where it also used to be called ''Usterner Aa'', runs through Uster in a western direction before it enters the
Greifensee about in the middle of the lake's eastern shore, near Niederuster.
The hamlet of
Aathal in the middle of the valley belongs to the municipality of
Seegräben.
The Aa Valley is a significant traffic artery. It connects the metropolitan area of Zurich with the municipalities of the
Zürich Oberland (Zurich Highlands). In addition to the heavy traffic on the national expressway between Uster and Wetzikon the three
S-Bahn railway lines S5, S14, and S15 traverse the valley, each at a half-hourly clock-face schedule so that in average every 5 minutes a train passes through the valley. The S14 stops in Aathal half-hourly.
Besides the buildings of different former spinning mills, which are connected by an industrial teaching path, one finds also the
Aathal Dinosaur Museum in Aathal.
During the 18/19th century the water power was intensely used by the cotton industry. Since 2008, there are attempts to re-use the small hydroelectric power plants for power production. Ten power plants operate again nowadays.
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Kraftwerk Unteraathal soll Wasserstrom liefern
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Links
Industrielehrpfad Zürcher Oberland
("german")
References
{{Coord, 47.3401, N, 8.7572, E, source:wikidata, display=title
Valleys of Europe
Seegräben