Happy TravellerWelcome to Haarlemmermeer, a unique municipality located in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands. Haarlemmermeer is a polder, which means it is land reclaimed from water. The name Haarlemmermeer means Haarlem’s lake, referring to the body of water from which the region was reclaimed in the 19th century. The main town in Haarlemmermeer is Hoofddorp, which has a population of 76,660. This charming town, along with the rapidly growing towns of Nieuw-Vennep and Badhoevedorp, are part of the Randstad agglomeration. The main international airport of the Netherlands, Schiphol, is located in Haarlemmermeer.
History:
The original Haarlemmermeer lake is said to have been mostly a peat bog, a relic of a northern arm of the Rhine which passed through the district in Roman times. The four lakes were formed into one by successive floods with the Haarlemmermeer name being applied to the combined lake. Villages disappeared in the process. During the Dutch War of Independence, the waters of the Haarlemmermeer were the scene of the Battle of Haarlemmermeer, a naval engagement between a Spanish fleet and the ships of the Dutch rebels known as Sea Beggars, who were trying to break the Siege of Haarlem. In 1643, Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater proposed to dike and drain the lake. Similar schemes, among which those of Nicolaus Samuel Cruquius in 1742 and of Baron van Lijnden van Hemmen in 1820 are worthy of special mention, were brought forward from time to time. But it was not until a furious hurricane in November 1836 drove the waters as far as the gates of Amsterdam, and another on Christmas Day sent them in the opposite direction to submerge the streets of Leiden, that the mind of the nation was seriously turned to the matter. On 1 August 1837, King William I appointed a royal commission of inquiry; the scheme proposed by the commission received the sanction of the Dutch Parliaments Second Chamber in March 1839, and in the following May the work was begun. First, a canal was dug around the lake, called Ringvaart (Ring Canal), to carry the water drainage and boat and ship traffic which had previously gone across the lake. This canal was 61 kilometres (38 mi) long, and 2.40 metres (7.9 ft) deep, and the excavated earth was used to build a dike from 30 to 50 metres (98 to 164 ft) wide around the lake. The area enclosed by the canal was more than 180 square kilometres (69 sq mi), and the average depth of the lake 4 metres (13 ft). As the water had no natural drainage, it was calculated that probably 1000 million tons of water would have to be raised by mechanical means. All of the pumping was done by steam mills, an innovation contrasting with the historic practice of draining polders using windmills. Three Cornish beam engines were imported from Hayle: the Leeghwater, the Cruquius (the largest Watt-design reciprocal stroke steam engine ever built and now a museum), and the Lijnden. Pumping began in 1848, and the lake was dry by July 1, 1852
