The motif
The Oker Valley has two inn poles, between which stretches, for an hour and a half on foot, a Saxon Switzerland made of granite. The Oker North Pole is the forest inn, but its South Pole is Romkerhall.
Our location is at the upper end of the Romkerhall Waterfall, which plunges 64 m into the depths here as the longest waterfall in the Harz. The waterfall was created in 1863 by the innkeeper Lüer. For this purpose, water from the Kleine Romke is diverted at the top and channelled through a ditch, along which it’s nice to walk, all the way to the Romker Cliff. The innkeeper completed his inn in the same year, 1863, and expected many guests. Why not: the main road through the Oker Valley had been expanded a few years earlier, at great effort and by blasting away many rocks, so that people could now travel here by carriage. The people of Bad Harzburg had set an example in 1859 with their Radau Waterfall, which, built in a strategically favourable spot by the road with an inn beside it, had become a popular excursion destination for spa guests. The Oker Valley achieved similar tourist attraction, and in terms of waterfall height, it easily surpassed that of Bad Harzburg. The Romkerhall innkeeper even had a leaflet printed in the 1930s praising the waterfall as “the landmark of the Oker Valley.”
Since, as always, A is followed by B, the Oker Valley has also been developed into a through road for car traffic. There’s a large car park here, which is regularly overcrowded on summer weekends.
