Wapno is a village in Wàgrowiec County, in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, close to the border with à »nin County. Wapno is Polish for lime and reflects the large gypsum deposits in the area, which can be processed to produce lime. There are also large deposits of rock salt that were mined extensively beginning in the nineteenth century.
Wapno lies in the so-called Gniezno Lake District, and is close to several lakes. The village is north of the town of WÃÂ growiec.
The present municipality (gmina) of Wapno includes the following hamlets in addition to the central village of Wapno:
The town is first mentioned in 1299, in an entry in the Codex Diplomaticus Majoris Poloniae, which records the appearance of one Count Adam of Wapno at a trial in the court of one Count Rozal, concerning the rights of the Cistercian monastery in à ÂÃÂkno vis-a-vis the village of DÃÂbogóra. At that time, Wapno was part of the Kuyavian principality headed by Duke Wà Âadyslaw I à Âokietek (Vladislaus the Short), who became the second king of Poland upon his election in 1330.
Under Prussian rule, Wapno was part of South Prussia (1793âÂÂ1807) and again of the Bromberg Region (1815âÂÂ1919) in the Province of Posen (Prowincja Poznaà Âska), interrupted only by it forming part of the Duchy of Warsaw. After World War I, it became part of the Second Polish Republic.
During the Invasion of Poland, the elementary school in Wapno served as the headquarters of the Polish 26th Infantry Division, a component of the Intervention Corps. Under the German Reichsgau Wartheland occupation (1939âÂÂ1945), it was briefly (1944âÂÂ1945) renamed Salzhof — "Saltyard." In 1945, Wapno once again became part of Poland.
Since mediaeval times, Wapno has been known for the quality of its gypsum, which was used in the construction of the cathedrals at Gniezno and Poznaà Â. There are also large salt deposits, consisting of salt domes intruding through the gypsum layer in diapirism. The salt and gypsum deposits under Wapno were subject to increasingly intensive extraction from 1828 onward, when landowner Florian Wilkoà Âski began exploratory surface mining.
Output increased from 200 tonnes per year at the beginning of modern mining, to over 5,000 tonnes per year in 1850, with the pace accelerating after the introduction of steam power in 1835. Output began increasing again in the 1950s, accompanied by the construction of housing for up to 3,000 workers. Gypsum was processed on site, whereas beginning in 1887, after the construction of a line connecting Wapno and Nakà Âo to Gniezno, salt was transported by rail to Nakà Âo for processing.
On September 28, 1977, the Tadeusz Koscziusko saltmine underneath the town center collapsed, forcing the evacuation of around 1,000 residents. Wapno has never recovered economically from the loss of mining jobs after the accident, which has never been fully explained.A 2014 study found that a likely cause of the accident was exploitation of resources at the tenth (and lowest) level of the mine, along with preparatory work at the eighth and ninth levels, which study authors called a "mistake," as room and pillar mining of rock salt tends to lead to the accumulation of fractures, fissures, and leaching of liquified sand and soil that lead to subsidence.