Muriaux is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

in the district of Franches-Montagnes in the canton of Jura in

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

. On 1 January 2009, the formerly independent municipality of Le Peuchapatte merged into the municipality of Muriaux.Amtliches Gemeindeverzeichnis der Schweiz
published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office accessed 14 January 2010.

History

Muriaux is first mentioned in 1301 as ''Murival''. The municipality was formerly known by its German name ''Spiegelberg'', however, that name is no longer used.

Geography

Muriaux has an area of . Of this area, or 60.5% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 36.1% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 3.2% is settled (buildings or roads) and or 0.2% is unproductive land.
2009 data accessed 25 March 2010. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 1.5% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.6%. Out of the forested land, 31.4% of the total land area is heavily forested and 4.7% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 5.7% is used for growing crops and 33.9% is pastures and 20.8% is used for alpine pastures. The widely scattered settlements of municipality are located in the Franches-Montagnes district. It consists of the village of Muriaux west of the Saignelégier- Le Noirmont road, the

hamlets A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. Sometimes a hamlet is defined f ...

of Les Emibois, Les Chenevières, Le Roselet, the

exclave An enclave is a territory that is entirely surrounded by the territory of only one other state or entity. An enclave can be an independent territory or part of a larger one. Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters. ''Enclave'' is s ...

of Le Cerneux-Veusil between the municipalities of Saint-Imier and Les Breuleux and the former municipality of Le Peuchapatte. The municipalities of

Le Bémont Le Bémont is a municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the district of Franches-Montagnes (district), Franches-Montagnes in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Jura (canton), Jura in Switzerland. History Le Bémont is first mentioned i ...

, Les Bois, Les Breuleux, La Chaux-des-Breuleux, Les Enfers, Les Genevez, Lajoux, Montfaucon, Muriaux, Le Noirmont, Saignelégier, Saint-Brais and Soubey are considering a merger on at a date in the future into the new municipality of Franches-Montagnes.

Coat of arms

The

blazon In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct an accurate image. The verb ''to blazon'' means to create such a description. The visual d ...

of the municipal

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the last two being outer garments), originating in Europe. The coat of arms on an escutcheon f ...

is ''Or, a Roundel Argent bordered Gules, in base triple steep Mountain Peaks Vert.''

Demographics

Muriaux has a population () of . , 4.6% of the population are resident foreign nationals.Swiss Federal Statistical Office – Superweb database – Gemeinde Statistics 1981-2008
accessed 19 June 2010. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of 1.2%. Migration accounted for 0.4%, while births and deaths accounted for 2%.
accessed 5 January 2012. Most of the population () speaks French (392 or 91.2%) as their first language, German is the second most common (32 or 7.4%) and Italian is the third (2 or 0.5%). There is 1 person who speaks Romansh. , the population was 51.3% male and 48.7% female. The population was made up of 244 Swiss men (49.3% of the population) and 10 (2.0%) non-Swiss men. There were 228 Swiss women (46.1%) and 13 (2.6%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 156 or about 36.3% were born in Muriaux and lived there in 2000. There were 123 or 28.6% who were born in the same canton, while 92 or 21.4% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 44 or 10.2% were born outside of Switzerland. , children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 26.1% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 60.5% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 13.5%. , there were 185 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 209 married individuals, 18 widows or widowers and 18 individuals who are divorced.STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 – 2000
accessed 2 February 2011. , there were 179 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.6 persons per household. There were 39 households that consist of only one person and 18 households with five or more people. , a total of 151 apartments (77.4% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 37 apartments (19.0%) were seasonally occupied and 7 apartments (3.6%) were empty.Swiss Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB – Datenwürfel für Thema 09.2 – Gebäude und Wohnungen
accessed 28 January 2011. The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 0.9%. The historical population is given in the following chart: Colors= id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9) id:darkgrey value:gray(0.8) ImageSize = width:1020 height:210 PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100 AlignBars = justify DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:1000 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:200 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:40 start:0 PlotData= color:yellowgreen width:40 mark:(line,white) align:center bar:1818 from:start till:745 text:"745" bar:1850 from:start till:801 text:"801" bar:1860 from:start till:992 text:"992" bar:1870 from:start till:990 text:"990" bar:1880 from:start till:928 text:"928" bar:1888 from:start till:972 text:"972" bar:1900 from:start till:908 text:"908" bar:1910 from:start till:810 text:"810" bar:1920 from:start till:762 text:"762" bar:1930 from:start till:621 text:"621" bar:1941 from:start till:597 text:"597" bar:1950 from:start till:530 text:"530" bar:1960 from:start till:461 text:"461" bar:1970 from:start till:392 text:"392" bar:1980 from:start till:400 text:"400" bar:1990 from:start till:411 text:"411" bar:2000 from:start till:430 text:"430"

Sights

The entire village of Muriaux is designated as part of the

Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites The Federal Inventory of Heritage Sites (ISOS) is part of a 1981 Ordinance of the Swiss Federal Council implementing the Federal Law on the Protection of Nature and Cultural Heritage. Sites of national importance Types The types are based on t ...

Motor Museum

The small motor museum closed in 2008 although the collection on which it was based remains in place.Muriaux Auto-Museum / Collection
accessed 8 December 2011.

Politics

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the FDP which received 26.5% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SPS (20.23%), the CSP (19.66%) and the SVP (18.23%). In the federal election, a total of 182 votes were cast, and the

voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of Voter registration, registered voters, Suffrage, eligible voters, or all Voti ...

was 48.7%.

Economy

The economy is based on dairy farming and cattle breeding. There are few other sources of employment in the village. , Muriaux had an unemployment rate of 2.1%. , there were 96 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 36 businesses involved in this sector. 5 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 4 businesses in this sector. 49 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 12 businesses in this sector. There were 241 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 41.9% of the workforce. the total number of

full-time equivalent Full-time equivalent (FTE), or whole time equivalent (WTE), is a unit of measurement that indicates the workload of an employed person (or student) in a way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. FTE is often use ...

jobs was 104. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 59, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 5, all of which were in manufacturing. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 40. In the tertiary sector; 27 or 67.5% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 2 or 5.0% were in the movement and storage of goods, 7 or 17.5% were in a hotel or restaurant, and 1 was a technical professional or scientist. , there were 67 workers who commuted into the municipality and 130 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net exporter of workers, with about 1.9 workers leaving the municipality for every one entering. About 16.4% of the workforce coming into Muriaux are coming from outside Switzerland.Swiss Federal Statistical Office – Statweb
accessed 24 June 2010. Of the working population, 3.4% used public transportation to get to work, and 57.8% used a private car.

Transport

The municipality has two railway stations, and , on the La Chaux-de-Fonds–Glovelier line.

Religion

From the , 278 or 64.7% were

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

, while 82 or 19.1% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 24 individuals (or about 5.58% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 1 individual who belonged to another church. 36 (or about 8.37% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 21 individuals (or about 4.88% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Muriaux about 138 or (32.1%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 47 or (10.9%) have completed additional higher education (either

university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

or a ''

Fachhochschule A (; plural ), abbreviated FH, is a university of applied sciences (UAS), in other words a Hochschule, German tertiary education institution that provides professional education in many applied sciences and applied arts, such as engineering, te ...

''). Of the 47 who completed tertiary schooling, 61.7% were Swiss men, 21.3% were Swiss women, 10.6% were non-Swiss men. The Canton of Jura school system provides two year of non-obligatory

Kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cen ...

, followed by six years of Primary school. This is followed by three years of obligatory lower Secondary school where the students are separated according to ability and aptitude. Following the lower Secondary students may attend a three or four year optional upper Secondary school followed by some form of Tertiary school or they may enter an

apprenticeship Apprenticeship is a system for training a potential new practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulat ...

. During the 2009–10 school year, there were no students attending school in Muriaux. , there were 9 students in Muriaux who came from another municipality, while 54 residents attended schools outside the municipality.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Municipalities of the canton of Jura