Geography
Baden-Wurttemberg
Today Baden-Wurttemberg is highly industrialized. Textiles, motor vehicles, machinery, chemicals, leather goods, pottery, glass, furniture, clocks, and optical equipment are produced here.
Crops, including wheat, barley, grapes, potatoes, and tobacco, are grown in the river valleys, and foothill regions. Dairying and forestry are carried on in the Black Forest and other highland regions. With its picturesque natural scenery, historic towns and castles, and famous health resorts, the state is second to Bavaria in tourism.
The Black Forest
The Schwarzwald is the wooded mountain region of SW Germany. The region is about 100 miles long, and varies in width from about 14 miles in the north to 38 miles in the south. Its name refers to the heavy stands of fir on the upper slopes. Below are extensive forests of oak and beech.
The mountain Feldberd (16 miles north of Wehr) is the highest peak in the Black Forest, at 4,642 feet.
The Danube and the Neckar rivers start in the Black Forest. Mineral springs abound in the north, and the region has health resorts such as Baden-Baden and Wildbad. The upland plains are suitable for farming and cattle raising.
The Rhine
The Rhine river has its headwaters in the mountains far to the east of Wehr. The spring water and the meltwaters of snow and glaciers flow into the Bodensee (Lake of Constance) where it is 1,310 feet above sea level. At the western end of the lake the river runs swiftly westward to Basel. On it way, at Schaffhausen it is about 600 feet wide when it plunges 75feet in a spectacular waterfall,
the Rheinfall.
Between Lake Constance and Basel the river is the border between Germany and Switzerland. At Basel the river turns north, enters the Rhine Graben, a flat-floored rift valley and becomes the border between Germany and France.
The Rhine river is navigable from its mouth in the North Sea to Basel, Switzerland, (elevation 820') a distance of 500 miles.
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