business school. The District Hospital opened in 1905. Gstaad During the Middle Ages, Gstaad village developed at the fork in the trails into the Valais and Vaud. It had an inn, a warehouse for storing trade goods and oxen to help pull wagons over the alpine passes by the 13th-14th centuries. The St. Nicholas chapel was built in the village in 1402, while the murals are from the second half of the 15th century. The village was dominated by cattle farming and agriculture until the great fire of 1898. It was then rebuilt to support the growing tourism industry. In a short time there were more than 1,000 hotel beds in the region. The Palace Hotel opened in 1913 as Gstaad's first luxury hotel. During the World Wars and the Great Depression, the tourism industry suffered and many hotels closed. After World War II, many of the large hotels remained closed, but they were replaced with a number of smaller non-hotel accommodation (chalets, apartment houses, residences). Most of the modern resorts and small hotels are built out of wood and retain traditional design elements. Abländschen Abländschen is a small hamlet in the upper Jaun valley. It is the only Bernese settlement in the otherwise Fribourg valley. Its population was 52 in 1990, down from a peak of 132 in 1888. The area was transferred in 1555 along with the rest of the Saanen parish from the Counts of Gruyere to Bern. Abländschen has always been hard to reach from Saanen and even today it can only be reached by a road from Boltigen over the Jaun Pass. Agriculture is still important to this day and is still the most important source of income. About one-third of the farms have a home farm, a spring pasture and alpine shelters. However, almost all farmers also have a second job either in forestry, tourism or as commuters to another town for weekday work. Geography Saanen has an area of . Of this area, or 51.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 35.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 4.6% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.6% is either rivers or lakes and or 8.3% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 2.4% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.4%. Out of the forested land, 27.6% of the total land area is heavily forested and