Qualla: Meppel

Meppel: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The story Meppel tells about itself begins with a mistake. One evening, sometime in the foggy past of folk memory, the people of the town looked up and saw what they took to be flames swirling around the steeple of the Grote Kerk. They roused the fire watch. They rang the alarm. When the smoke parted, the fire turned out to be a column of mosquitoes circling the spire. The townspeople have been called Meppeler Muggen, Meppel mosquitoes, ever since. Most cities defend their nicknames. Meppel embraces this one, statues and all.

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Meppel: Smallest in Drenthe

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Meppel is the smallest municipality in the province of Drenthe by area, about 57 square kilometers, with a population of just over 34,000. It sits in the southwestern corner of the province, almost on the line where Drenthe meets Overijssel. For its size it has had a complicated ...

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Meppel: Inland Harbor

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the sixteenth century, Meppel got rich on a fuel: peat. From the moors all across Drenthe, dried peat blocks moved by barge along the Drentsche Hoofdvaart and Hoogeveense Vaart, converged at Meppel, then continued west along the Meppelerdiep to Zwartsluis and into the Zuiderze...

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Meppel: What the Twentieth Century Took

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most of those canals through the city center were filled in during the 20th century, swallowed by roads. Drawbridges were replaced with fixed bridges. By the time the narrowing of the Hoogeveense Vaart at Oosterboer was completed in 2005, it had become impossible to sail through ...

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Meppel: The Junction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 1 October 1867, the railway reached Meppel. The station opened on what would become the Arnhem-Leeuwarden line, the Staatslijn A, and within a few decades the Meppel-Groningen line, the Staatslijn C, branched off from the same platforms. Today Meppel station is the fourth-larg...

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Meppel: The People Meppel Sent Away

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Meppel has a long habit of producing notable people who then make their reputation somewhere else. Jan Jansen Bleecker, born here in 1641, became Mayor of Albany, New York. Sir Joseph Joel Duveen, born in 1843, became the art dealer who helped shape the collections of British and...

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