A Swiss story in the Roffla Gorge

29 July 2025

For centuries, the Swiss have built bridges in the most challenging locations, tamed rivers, and constructed tunnels and railways through the heart of the mountains. One of the most remarkable initiatives, however, is the construction of a rock gallery under the Rhine, the Hinterrhein, at the beginning of the 20th century. It resembles, to a certain extent, the creation of the ice caves in the Rhone glacier near the Furka Pass!

The inn in the Roffla gorge has existed for many generations. For centuries, the road that runs past the inn was the only way to cross the Alps, either via the Splügen Pass or the St. Bernardino Pass, to Italy. The inn was therefore a rest stop and accommodation for people, carriages and horses. It provided the family with a good, albeit modest, income.

The museum in the Gasthaus

Maria (1869-1941) and Christian Pitschen-Melchior (1862-1940). Collection: museum in the Gasthaus

When the Gotthard railway was opened at the end of the 19th century, much of the traffic shifted. The Christian Pitschen-Melchior family soon had only a minimal income, and so they decided to emigrate to America. The parents stayed and continued to care for the few guests and run the small farm.

Collection: Museum Gasthaus

Once they arrived in New York, they found work. The family grew larger and larger, but even with the children, they did not feel comfortable in New York. Christian Pitschen-Melchior also worked for a time as a servant for a wealthy Englishman.
He travelled through America with him, including a trip to Niagara Falls. He realised that a waterfall was a popular destination and that it could be a source of income.

After this trip, he often thought about this waterfall because he knew that there was also a waterfall at home in the Roffla Gorge, but he could only hear it because there was no path leading into the gorge. When his parents wrote to him to say that they could no longer run the inn for reasons of age, the emigrants decided to return home.

Illustration from the book ‘M. Rettich, Die Geschichte vom Wasserfall, Glarus 2015’. Pictured, however, is a wood drill instead of a hand drill, which is about 1 metre long and operated by two people.

Once they arrived home, they began working to make their way into the gorge, initially only by drilling and hammering! Between 1907 and 1914, they worked in the gorge, detonating approximately 8,000 explosive charges. However, it required a great deal of effort and strength to hammer the blast holes into the hard rock.

In 1914, a breakthrough was achieved, and a gallery was created beneath the Hinterrhein waterfall. Over the next few years, more and more people came to the inn and paid to visit the impressive Roffla Gorge with its rock gallery under the Rhine. For a few years now, the winter months have also been used to produce new textiles for the inn or sale to visitors.

This story is also a Swiss story: emigration, the search for work abroad (such as countless entrepreneurs, confectioners, soldiers in foreign armies, or governesses for the children of wealthy families), homesickness, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

Christian Pitschen-Melchior, his wife, their children and the generations that followed deserve to be mentioned. After all, where else in Switzerland, Germany, Liechtenstein, Austria or the Netherlands was it possible to walk under the Rhine as early as 1914?

(Source and further information: Gasthaus Rofflaschucht)