historical coat of arms of the county of Sargans was azure three mullets or. In 1798, Sargans became part of the Mels district of the Canton of Linth in the Helvetic Republic. It was incorporated into the Canton of St. Gallen in 1803. Most of the town was destroyed by fire in 1811. Sargans is at the juncture of the railway lines connecting Chur with Zürich and with Lake Constance, built in 1859. The line to Vienna was added in 1884. The Saar was first canalised in 1858 for the construction of the railway station and again in 1978 for the construction of the A3-A13 motorway junction. Sargans remained mostly unaffected by industrialisation; the Gonzen iron ore mine was closed down in 1966. Geography Sargans has an area, , of . Of this area, 38.4% is used for agricultural purposes, while 35.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 20.2% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (6.2%) is non-productive (rivers or lakes). The municipality is the capital of the Sarganserland Wahlkreis. It is located at the foot of the Mt Gonzen. The eastern border of the municipality is the Rhine river and Liechtenstein. As it is located at the intersection of the Rhine and Seez valleys, Sargans has long been important in both a strategic and commercial sense. It consists of the village of Sargans and the hamlets of Vild, Ratell, Prod, Splee, Riet, Farb, Töbeli and Schwefelbad. Transport The municipality is located on the A3 motorway. Sargans is an important regional transportation node. Trains heading north toward St. Gallen, east toward Chur and Ticino, and toward Austria, all pass through Sargans. Buses heading toward Liechtenstein also leave Sargans. Demographics Sargans has a population (as of ) of . , about 22.0% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Of the foreign population, (), 34 are from Germany, 126 are from Italy, 432 are from former Yugoslavia, 38 are from Austria, 50 are from Turkey, and 228 are from other countries. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 7.3%. Most of the population () speaks German (87.0%), with Serbo-Croatian being second most common ( 3.2%) and Italian being third ( 2.1%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 4,146 speak German, 18 people speak French, 102 people speak Italian, and 22 people speak Romansh. The age distribution, , in Sargans