There are still a lot of people in Hungary who are older than the Kis-Háros Island near Nagytétény, Budapest.
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| The Kis-Háros Island emerges from the Danube in 1940 (source: Hadtörténeti Múzeum, section: 5062_1) |
Recently, an educational video about the island of Kis-Háros was uploaded to BudapestVideo.hu, showing the hidden natural values of the island. The nearly three-hectare area was protected in 1999, six years after the declaration of the neighboring "big brother" Háros Island. The video takes us back to a story we wrote 8 years ago, which raised a seemingly intractable question that has remained unanswered ever since: when exactly did the Kis-Háros Island form?
"The Kis-Háros Island was born as a gravel bar as a result of river regulation sometime in the 20th century. It is impossible to pinpoint the exact date of its birth, as the gravel bar gradually rose from the Danube."
Before the above aerial photograph was found, the only answer to the question would have been sometime before 1967, as this is the earliest aerial photograph of the island on the fentrol.hu website. Earlier maps usually omitted the Kis-Háros Island. It is not on the 1941 military map and is also missing from the 1958 town planning base map of the Nagytétényi section. However, it could have been on the 1941 map, next to the last houses of the Baross Gábor district, which stretches down to the Danube, as far as the aerial photo was taken in 1940 is concerned. Unless it is a flyspeck on the map, the black spot is the Kis-Háros Island and its first reflection in the history of the islands in the Danube, which are constantly being created and destroyed.
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| The Kis Háros Island during the autumn of 1968 (fentrol.hu) |
That black spot cannot be a flyspeck for several reasons. If you compare it with the 1968 aerial photo, you can see that its location is correct. In the 1940 photo, the river color and the flooded bank make it look very much like they were flying over Nagytétény during high water level. Only the canopy of freshly sprouted trees on the gravel reef is sticking out of the water. This gravel reef is where it is because the sister island of Háros was annexed to the right bank of the Danube in 1911 (interestingly, Háros and Hunyadi Islands were probably administratively part of Szigetszentmiklós until 1950 and only became part of the capital through the Greater Budapest concept.
The Kis-Háros Island was therefore already an island in 1940, and the few meters of trees that settled on it suggest that the island's origins are not far off the mark if we put its origins in the second half of the 1930s. In this case, the age of the island would be around 80-85 years.
To conclude, here is the educational film about the island that inspired this post:
Thanks to the crew for their thought-provoking work!
Sources:
- https://budapestvideo.hu/video/a-kis-haros-sziget?fbclid=IwAR1kWxrr1mxnWbeqa842zmt2qLR_XAEF9XyIfwMIsrZGfIsxw9RXfRICD2I
- http://www.termeszetvedelem.hu/index.php?pg=pl_20-54-TT-99
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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