Why was Thomas Jefferson so determined to visit this pretty lake?

Saint-Ferréol is a ten-minute drive from my home in the Lauragais, and with temperatures forecast to top 40 degrees Celsius this afternoon, I’ll be going there for a swim as soon as I finish writing this post. Thomas Jefferson, in contrast, was more interested in the engineering aspects of Saint-Ferréol because it is, in fact, a reservoir, not a lake.

The first stone of the giant wall that created this body of water was laid on 17 April 1667. Five years later it was filled for the first time and contemporaries hailed it as the Eighth Wonder of the World. At that time, it was undoubtedly the biggest dam ever built, and today it is the oldest dam in France. What was its purpose? To provide a copious water supply to Naurouze, the highest point of the Canal du Midi.

Man had long dreamed of creating a navigable waterway between the Atlantic and Mediterranean, but at best this would mean creating a canal which at its highest point (189 metres above sea level) would have to pass through a 38-kilometre stretch of particularly dry countryside with no streams or rivers to compensate for all the water lost through canal locks, evaporation and leakage.

In the 1660s, a collector of the salt tax called Pierre-Paul Riquet came up with a plan to take water from the rivers of the Montagne Noire and transport it to Naurouze. To do this, he dug two long water channels with a combined length of 63 kilometres and, in order to store enough water for the dry months of summer, he built the dam at Saint-Ferréol.

The official opening of the Canal du Midi took place on 15 May 1682, two years after Riquet’s death. A century later, Thomas Jefferson was the United States Ambassador to France. In September 1786, he fell over in Paris and dislocated his wrist. The pain persisted, and early the following year he decided to follow the advice of his doctors and try a cure at the thermal springs of Aix-en-Provence. Afterwards he examined the whole length of the Canal du Midi because in his home state of Virginia there was great interest in the idea of making the Potomac navigable.

Jefferson also came up with a novel way of travelling on the canal. He had journeyed down from Paris in his own carriage and when he reached the mouth of the canal near Agde he saw no reason to abandon it. ‘I dismounted my carriage from its wheels, placed it on the deck of a light bark, and was thus towed on the canal instead of the post road.’

I spent many a long day researching the Canal du Midi for ‘Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood’, and during my travels I found several cast iron plaques commemorating Thomas Jefferson’s visit. I was also struck by how many French sources refer to his visit – French historians are apparently much more interested in Jefferson’s passage than other contemporary visitors such as Louis XVI’s daughter, his brother who later became Louis XVIII, or Louis Philippe’s eldest son. Perhaps this is because when Jefferson spent eight days on the canal he recorded his impressions in notes and letters, and he made observations on aspects of daily life which the locals took for granted and in which royalty took little interest. His writings covered agriculture, architecture, the price of goods and labour, the condition of the people, technical aspects of the canal, and where he could find the best wine.

It seems that during his travels, he acquired a taste for the wines of my area. When he died in 1826, his cellar inventory recorded the presence of 49 bottles of Blanquette de Limoux, a tipple which promotes itself as the oldest sparkling wine in the world. There’s a claim I shall enjoy investigating another time! Perhaps I’ll start my research by opening a bottle this afternoon after my swim in the lake - or reservoir - of Saint-Ferréol.

Finally, here’s a picture of the reservoir when it was drained in 2017. After 350 years of service, the dam walls needed some repair work!