Lochalsh is a district of mainland Scotland that is currently part of the

Highland Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) refers to ranges of hills, typically from up to while highland (or highlands) is ...

council area. The Lochalsh district covers all of the mainland either side of

Loch Alsh Loch Alsh (from the Scottish Gaelic ''Loch Aillse'', "foaming lake") is a sea inlet between the isle of Skye in the Inner Hebrides and the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. The name is also used to describe the surrounding country and the feuda ...

- and of

Loch Duich Loch Duich (Scottish Gaelic: "Loch Dubhthaich") is a sea loch situated on the western coast of Scotland, in the Highlands. History In 1719, British forces burned many homesteads along the loch's shores in the month preceding the Battle of Glen S ...

- between

Loch Carron Loch Carron (Scottish Gaelic: "Loch Carrann") is a sea loch on the west coast of Ross and Cromarty in the Scottish Highlands, which separates the Lochalsh peninsula from the Applecross peninsula, and from the Stomeferry headland east of Loc ...

and Loch Hourn, ie. from

Stromeferry Stromeferry ( gd, Port an t-Sròim) is a village, located on the south shore of the west coast sea loch, Loch Carron, in western Ross-shire, Scottish Highlands and is in the Scottish council area of Highland. Its name reflects its former role as ...

in the north on Loch Carron down to Corran on Loch Hourn (past

Arnisdale Arnisdale ( gd, Àrnasdal) is a hamlet in the historic county of Inverness-shire in the local authority area of Highlands of Scotland. It lies on the north shore of Loch Hourn, around down a single-track road from Glenelg. It has a permanent ...

at the south end of the road from Glenelg) and as (south-)west as

Kintail Kintail ( gd, Cinn Tàile) is an area of mountains in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, located in the Highland Council area. It consists of the mountains to the north of Glen Shiel and the A87 road between the heads of Loch Duich and Loch ...

. It was sometimes more narrowly defined as just being the hilly peninsula that lies between Loch Carron and Loch Alsh. The main settlement is

Kyle of Lochalsh Kyle of Lochalsh (from the Gaelic ''Caol Loch Aillse'', "strait of the foaming loch") is a village in the historic county of Ross-shire on the northwest coast of Scotland, located around west-southwest of Inverness. It is located on the Lochal ...

, located at the entrance to Loch Alsh, opposite the village of Kyleakin on the adjacent island of

Skye The Isle of Skye, or simply Skye (; gd, An t-Eilean Sgitheanach or ; sco, Isle o Skye), is the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate from a mountainous hub dominated ...

. A ferry used to connect the two settlements but was replaced by the

Skye Bridge The Skye Bridge ( gd, Drochaid an Eilein Sgitheanaich) is a road bridge over Loch Alsh, Scotland, connecting the Isle of Skye to the island of Eilean Bàn. The name is also used for the whole Skye Crossing, which further connects Eilean Bàn ...

in 1995. The earliest known inhabitants were

Picts The Picts were a group of peoples who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland (north of the Firth of Forth) during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from ea ...

, but in the late 6th century Loch Alsh became part of the Gaelic island kingdom of

Dál Riata Dál Riata or Dál Riada (also Dalriada) () was a Gaelic kingdom that encompassed the western seaboard of Scotland and north-eastern Ireland, on each side of the North Channel. At its height in the 6th and 7th centuries, it covered what is ...

. Between the 8th and 13th centuries the area was disputed between the kingdoms of Norway and

Alba ''Alba'' ( , ) is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. It is also, in English language historiography, used to refer to the polity of Picts and Scots united in the ninth century as the Kingdom of Alba, until it developed into the Kingdom ...

and often ruled by independent lords. Although nominally subject to the

Kingdom of Scotland The Kingdom of Scotland (; , ) was a sovereign state in northwest Europe traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a ...

after 1266 AD, the history of the region until the failed rebellion of

Bonnie Prince Charlie Bonnie, is a Scottish given name and is sometimes used as a descriptive reference, as in the Scottish folk song, My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. It comes from the Scots language word "bonnie" (pretty, attractive), or the French bonne (good). That ...

in 1745 is one of obscure struggles between the local clans and against the central government. To prevent further feuds and rebellions, in 1746 the government enacted laws designed to break the bond between the clan leaders and their people. An indirect result was gradual conversion of the land from

crofting Crofting is a form of land tenure and small-scale food production particular to the Scottish Highlands, the islands of Scotland, and formerly on the Isle of Man. Within the 19th century townships, individual crofts were established on the bett ...

to more profitable and less labour-intensive sheep farming. These

Highland Clearances The Highland Clearances ( gd, Fuadaichean nan Gàidheal , the "eviction of the Gaels") were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, mostly in two phases from 1750 to 1860. The first phase resul ...

and the subsequent Highland Potato Famine of 1846–52 forced many of the people to emigrate. Today, the area is thinly populated with an economy based mainly on tourism.

Etymology

Loch ''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch. In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicised spelling ...

" meaning a body of water is a well-known

Scots Scots usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: * Scots language, a language of the West Germanic language family native to Scotland * Scots people, a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland * Scoti, a Latin na ...

word that is a borrowing from

Gaelic Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Gaelic languages are spoken in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ca ...

. ''Aillse'', the Gaelic name of the loch and district, is probably of Celtic origin but its meaning is not clear. It may be from ''allas'', sweat, and a reference to foam or scum on the waters. Mac an Tàilleir offers "loch of spume". "Kyle" is from the Gaelic ''caol'', meaning a strait.

Geology

Loch Alsh lies between hills just east of the

Moine Thrust Belt The Moine Thrust Belt or Moine Thrust Zone is a linear tectonic feature in the Scottish Highlands which runs from Loch Eriboll on the north coast south-west to the Sleat peninsula on the Isle of Skye. The thrust belt consists of a series of t ...

, an unusual geological structure that runs from the

Sleat Sleat is a peninsula and civil parish on the island of Skye in the Highland council area of Scotland, known as "the garden of Skye". It is the home of the clan ''MacDonald of Sleat''. The name comes from the Scottish Gaelic , which in turn comes ...

peninsula in Skye on a northeast diagonal to

Loch Eriboll __NOTOC__ Loch Eriboll (Scottish Gaelic: "Loch Euraboil") is a long sea loch on the north coast of Scotland, which has been used for centuries as a deep water anchorage as it is safe from the often stormy seas of Cape Wrath and the Pentland Fir ...

on the north coast of Scotland. In this area, geologists found in 1907 that younger rocks from the west lay below the older rocks of the east, a discovery that helped lead to the modern theory of

mountain building Mountain formation refers to the geological processes that underlie the formation of mountains. These processes are associated with large-scale movements of the Earth's crust (tectonic plates). Folding, faulting, volcanic activity, igneous int ...

. The Lewisian gneisses around Loch Alsh were formed in the

Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of th ...

period, about 2800 million years ago, while the volcanic rocks,

gabbro Gabbro () is a phaneritic (coarse-grained), mafic intrusive igneous rock formed from the slow cooling of magnesium-rich and iron-rich magma into a holocrystalline mass deep beneath the Earth's surface. Slow-cooling, coarse-grained gabbro is ...

and

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies und ...

that make up most of Skye, and that in some places lie under the older gneisses, are just 55 million years old. The ancient

metamorphic rocks Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock ( protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, cau ...

around Loch Alsh have been heavily eroded over the years, most recently by a series of

ice ages An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...

Prehistory

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

brochs A broch is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure found in Scotland. Brochs belong to the classification "complex Atlantic roundhouse" devised by Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s. Their origin is a matter of some controversy. Orig ...

, tall stone towers up to ten meters high and more than 2,000 years old, are found near Glenelg to the south. Records from Roman times describe the people of the area as

, a Celtic people. The

, a tribe of

Gaels The Gaels ( ; ga, Na Gaeil ; gd, Na Gàidheil ; gv, Ny Gaeil ) are an ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man in the British Isles. They are associated with the Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic lan ...

from Ireland, established the kingdom of

in the

Hebrides The Hebrides (; gd, Innse Gall, ; non, Suðreyjar, "southern isles") are an archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The islands fall into two main groups, based on their proximity to the mainland: the Inner and Outer Hebrid ...

and western Scotland late in the 6th century, and their

language gradually replaced the earlier Pictish language. (Many of the local people speak Gaelic to this day). In the 7th and 8th centuries the area suffered raids and invasions by

Vikings Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

. From the 9th century until the

Treaty of Perth The Treaty of Perth, signed 2 July 1266, ended military conflict between Magnus VI of Norway and Alexander III of Scotland over possession of the Hebrides and the Isle of Man. The text of the treaty. The Hebrides a