Nădrag

Nădrag is located in the northeastern part of Timiș County, at the foot of the 1,380-meter-high (4,530 ft) Padeș Peak in the Poiana Ruscă Mountains. Nădrag has a generally hilly relief, with mostly steeper slopes. It covers an area of 13,250 ha (32,700 acres), of which 623 ha (1,540 acres) represent agricultural land; 247 ha (610 acres), in turn, are arable.[2]

Hydrography

Nădrag River

Nădrag is crossed by the Padeș stream, which receives as tributaries several small streams: Cornet (near the center of the village), Izvodea (right in the center of the village), Haiduca (about 500 m or 1,600 ft downstream) and Nădrăgel (at the exit to Crivina). Padeș springs right near the peak of the same name, in the place called "Seven Springs" (Romanian: Șapte Izvoare). Its length, calculated from springs, is about 34 km (21 mi), including the part from the confluence with Cornet to Jdioara and Criciova, where it flows into Timiș River as Nădrag stream.[2]

The former iron foundries and steel mills in Nădrag

The first recorded mention of Nădrag dates from 1364, in a report of the chapter from Arad, when Nodrag was a Hungarian royal property.[4] Another mention from the Middle Ages is from 1548, when Queen Isabella Jagiellon made several donations to the prefect of Temes Petru Petrovici in Szörény County.[4] There was also a fortress here that was destroyed in the Turkish era.

The existing ores in the area have been mined since ancient times. But modern mining in the area began only in 1845, when a Viennese company built the Zsidóvári vasgyár ironworks with its headquarters in Nădrag. The locality was developed on account of this industrial activity and was re-established on the place of the older hearth of the village. At first the factory hired German settlers sent to Banat by the Viennese company, but later Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians and even Roma arrived, each group forming its own colony. However, most workers and miners remained German.[5]

In 1865, for unknown reasons, locals burned over 800 ha of forest between Nădrag and Crivina, thus reducing the forested area that then covered most of the commune. In 1879 the mining company became the Nădrag Iron Industrial Company and continued its development. Thus, between 1880–1923, blast furnaces, steelworks, a foundry, a rolling mill, a machine factory and an agricultural machinery factory are built. After the union of Banat with Romania, the factory was reorganized and became part of Titan–Nădrag–Călan company. In 1938, this company had almost 5,000 employees, a large part of them in Nădrag. During the interwar period, the siderurgical sections developed and more and more Romanians settled in Nădrag, who came to hold the relative majority in the 1940s.[5]

After World War II, Nădrag and its factory will be developed within the country's industrialization plan according to the principles of the centralized economy. The Ciocanul factory becomes the most important in the area and attracts more and more inhabitants. Over the span of two decades, the population of Nădrag almost doubles, and the locality begins to have the features of a small industrial town. In addition, surveys have highlighted reserves of useful minerals in the area: gold, silver, cobalt, chromium, uranium, in addition to those of iron, lead and zinc mined earlier. The apogee of industrial development took place in the 1980s, and after the Revolution of 1989, the factory was closed, followed by an explosion of unemployment and implicitly by the exodus of the inhabitants to other localities.[5]

Nădrag had a population of 2,836 inhabitants at the 2011 census, down 3% from the 2002 census. Most inhabitants are Romanians (89.81%), larger minorities being represented by Germans (3.31%) and Hungarians (2.61%). For 3.03% of the population, ethnicity is unknown.[6] By religion, most inhabitants are Orthodox (76.87%), but there are also minorities of Roman Catholics (12.98%), Baptists (2.64%), Plymouth Brethren (1.76%) and Pentecostals (1.48%). For 3.03% of the population, religious affiliation is unknown.[7]