Vaassen

Geschiedenis

Vaassen is one of four villages in the Dutch municipality of Epe. Vaassen is situated between Apeldoorn and Zwolle, on the eastern edge of the Veluwe in the province of Gelderland and has 12,719 inhabitants (2008). Vaassen was an independent municipality up to 1 January 1818, when it merged with Epe.HistoryThe earliest signs of residents in this area are the burial mounds and "Celtic Fields" northwest of Vaassen in the Veluwe, between the Elburgerweg and Gortelseweg. There is a large complex of these fields in Vaassen, around Gortelseweg. The German inhabitants were farmers and lived there during the Roman era. They inhabited wooden huts and lived from agriculture, livestock, cultivation of herbs, and hunting deer and boar.The town was mentioned for the first time in a certificate from the Codex Laureshamnensis of the monastery of Lorschin in the year 891 or 892, when someone called Brunhilde gave a farmhouse and the church to Lorsch. The name Vaassen derives from "Fasna", an old word for a specific rough type of grass.From 2 September 1887 up to 8 October 1950 there was a railway station in Vaassen. The station was part of the so-called Baron line between Apeldoorn and Zwolle. In 1950 the station was closed because the line was discontinued. The former railway station is still in existence, but is now used as a dwelling.Vaassen is characterized by a centuries-long coexistence of Protestant and Roman Catholic populations.