Van Heerlijkheid tot badplaats

: De ontwikkeling van Callantsoog tot badplaats van 1876-1940

Abstract

Callantsoog is a crowded seaside resort in the summer. The local economy is largely driven by tourism. Large tourism companies own a large part of the tourism enterprises. Campsites are for a large part converted into holiday parks. The village is a 'successful' seaside resort and has a solid economic foundation, but seems to be heading for stagnation. The resort is getting more and more urban symptoms. For a long time it looked like the village would not succeed in becoming a seaside resort of interest, despite the good, wide beach and the beautiful surroundings. In the nineteenth century, local entrepreneurs made efforts to get more tourists to their village, but with little success. The turning point came in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the richest man in North Holland, M.P.T. Prévinaire, bought the estate Heerlijkheid Callantsoog and built three villas at the entrance of the village. He discovered the village as a resort. Prévinaire showed local entrepreneurs that there were opportunities in the field of tourism. Before 1900 it must have been mainly well-to-do people who visited the resort and took a sea bath there. The village could only be reached via sandy paths and cart tracks. Even by carriage or on horseback it was quite an undertaking. If the House of Representatives had opted in 1860 for the significantly cheaper railway route along Callantsoog, the resort would have developed much earlier. The municipal administration at the time was not interested in tourism at all. Schagen's did, so a train station was built there, 13 kilometers from Callantsoog. Important factors that hindered the development of the resort were the poverty of most of the Dutch population and the little leisure they had at their disposal. After the First World War this changed: workers were given more free time and purchasing power. The resort received more visitors but was hindered in the development by jonkheer Van de Poll, who did not like pressure in his surroundings, while the mayor preferred to bring rich people to the village and preferred to see villas built instead of simple summer houses. At the end of the thirties, the village was expanded with dozens of simple summer cottages and about ten guest houses. Callantsoog could be then called a resort for all layers of the population. In the Second World War, the Germans largely demolished the village, causing the seaside resort to fall into disrepair. After the war there was a rapid recovery in the fifties and sixties.

Date of Award	1 Apr 2023
Original language	Dutch
Supervisor	Herman Simissen (Supervisor) & Leo Wessels (Supervisor)