V3 · Sonnet

Old Żywiec and Zadziele One lake, two separate addresses, three scales. Each scale asks a different question and has a different document.

A city district and a separate village lay within the area flooded when Lake Żywiec was created (Visit Żywiec). On the valley diagram they are two points in the same strip of water (sequence, not distance). Up close they are two different places, and the last sheet is empty where an outline is missing.

1 : 25,000

Sheet 1 · valley

How far did the project reach?

Place: Old Żywiec and Zadziele · event date in the source: 1965–66 (Płużek 2020) · date of planning material: none

  1. Tresna damnorthern narrowing of the valley · opened 12 November 1967
  2. Zadzieleseparate village · middle part of the reservoir (per V2)
  3. Old Żywiecdistrict of Żywiec · southern backwater zone (per V2)
  4. Centre of Żywiecoutside the flooded area

The blue strip is the lake water; it is not an outline of the reservoir. What is shown is the sequence along the valley, not distances.

Document
Description of the lake (Visit Żywiec) and a chronology (Płużek 2020).
Event date in the source
Filling from mid-November 1965; in 1966 the water filled the valley from Tresna to Żywiec.
What is not visible
The outline of the reservoir, roads, the Soła riverbed and settlement boundaries. The positions of the points relative to each other come from V2 and need checking.
1 : 5,000

Sheet 2 · settlement

What was the layout of the settlement?

Place: Old Żywiec · event date in the source: 1964 (Płużek 2020, attribution to be checked) · date of planning material: none

Settlement plan: not in the material

  • A district of Żywiec affected by flooding; the city centre was outside the flooded area. Visit Żywiec
  • 1964: demolitions and roads around the future lake. Płużek writes about the valley in general; the attribution to this district comes from V2 and is awaiting checking.
Document
Nothing in the material supplied documents the layout of the settlement.
What is not visible
Streets, farmsteads, district boundaries or where the flooding ended.

Place: Zadziele · event date in the source: 1964 (Płużek 2020) · date of planning material: none

Village plan: not in the material

  • A separate village, not a district of Żywiec. Visit Żywiec
  • In 1964 the “Wschód” Steel Furniture Factory moved from Zadziele to Zabłocie (a district of Żywiec). Płużek
Document
The material contains no village plan. There is only a mention of the factory in the chronology.
What is not visible
The layout of farmsteads, roads and fields, and the location of the factory within the village.
1 : 1,000

Sheet 3 · plot

What happened to a specific address?

Place: Old Żywiec · date of planning material: none

no plot outline

We do not draw a house or a plot.

Document
None identified. Leads to check: Muzeum Miejskie w Żywcu [Żywiec City Museum] and H. Kupczak, „Stary Żywiec — nasze utracone dziedzictwo” [Old Żywiec — our lost heritage] (ŻTH).
What is not visible
Any specific address.

Place: Zadziele · document date: 1843 (description of the village boundaries, not a plot plan)

no plot outline

We do not draw a house or a plot.

Document
State Archive, unit 18879051: description of the boundaries of Zadziele from 1843, nine scans (source). It is a description of the village boundaries, not a plot plan; the scans were not read.
What is not visible
The shape of any plot or farmstead, and its position relative to today's reservoir.

The scales 1 : 25,000, 1 : 5,000 and 1 : 1,000 are illustrative. They were chosen to show the ×5 step; they do not describe any surviving map of these places. The drawings on the sheets are diagrams of relationships, not plans or maps; the heights of the sheets do not correspond to the terrain.

Action · reading from the sheet

The same line, different ground

A pencil line, a ruler error or a deformed sheet give a reading uncertainty measured in millimetres on paper. On the ground it means as much as the scale allows: 1 mm is 25 m at 1 : 25,000, 5 m at 1 : 5,000 and 1 m at 1 : 1,000. Below, the uncertainty circle has the same size on paper in every window, while the 10 × 12 m reference object grows with the scale. The reference object is illustrative; it is not a building in either of these places.

1 : 25,000valley window

40 by 40 mm window at 1 : 25,000: uncertainty circle and 10 by 12 m reference object Model diagram. The grid square is 10 mm on paper. The circle around the centre shows the reading uncertainty (drawn on top, with a light outline), and the dark rectangle in the middle is the 10 by 12 metre reference object at this scale; at 1 to 25,000 it is under half a millimetre, so it is visible only as a dot.

Model diagram · the 10 × 12 m reference object is illustrative, not a building in these places.

± 50 m

The reference object is lost in the lineThe circle is wider than the shorter side of the reference object.

A 40 × 40 mm window covers
1.0 × 1.0 km
A 10 mm grid square is
250 m
The reference object on paper is
0.4 × 0.48 mm
Uncertainty circle
holds approx. 65 × the reference area

1 : 5,000settlement window

40 by 40 mm window at 1 : 5,000: uncertainty circle and 10 by 12 m reference object Model diagram. The grid square is 10 mm on paper. The circle shows the reading uncertainty (drawn on top, with a light outline), and the dark rectangle is the 10 by 12 metre reference object; at 1 to 5,000 it measures about 2 by 2.4 mm.

Model diagram · the 10 × 12 m reference object is illustrative, not a building in these places.

± 10 m

The reference object is lost in the lineThe circle is wider than the shorter side of the reference object.

A 40 × 40 mm window covers
200 × 200 m
A 10 mm grid square is
50 m
The reference object on paper is
2 × 2.4 mm
Uncertainty circle
holds approx. 3 × the reference area

1 : 1,000plot window

40 by 40 mm window at 1 : 1,000: uncertainty circle and 10 by 12 m reference object Model diagram. The grid square is 10 mm on paper. The circle shows the reading uncertainty (drawn on top of the rectangle, with a light outline), and the dark rectangle is the 10 by 12 metre reference object; at 1 to 1,000 it measures 10 by 12 mm and is clearly larger than the circle when the uncertainty is small.

Model diagram · the 10 × 12 m reference object is illustrative, not a building in these places.

± 2 m

The reference object can be pointed outThe circle's diameter is at most half the shorter side.

A 40 × 40 mm window covers
40 × 40 m
A 10 mm grid square is
10 m
The reference object on paper is
10 × 12 mm
Uncertainty circle
= approx. 10% of the reference area

A legible drawing does not prove that a building stood in a given place, or whose it was. Even on sheet 3 a plot document is needed, and the material has none for either place. The model does not know the uncertainty of surviving maps or their georeferencing; an unknown value is not zero.

Limits of reading

What can be seen, and what a plan will not say about the residents

Visible

Two separate addresses: a city district and a village. One lake does not mean one history. The flooding of Old Żywiec did not reach the city centre.

Not visible

  • People. No sheet says who lived on a plot, when, and where they moved to. These are questions for documents and accounts that we do not have here. We do not claim that they survive for these places.
  • Exact location. To draw an outline you need a georeferenced plan, the date of the plan and the relation of the object to today's reservoir. None of these elements has been checked.
  • A single date. The demolitions, the filling and the opening of the dam are three different calendars (see below).

Sequence, not a timeline

The lake did not appear in a single day

Four stages according to a single source (Płużek 2020). The spacing between columns does not correspond to the passage of time, and the thickness of a line is not a measure of importance.

  1. 1958FloodThe June flood in the Żywiec region sped up decisions about building the reservoir. Flood protection was emphasised more strongly in the planning.
  2. 1964Roads and addressesRoads around the future lake were being started and buildings demolished. The “Wschód” factory left Zadziele and moved to Zabłocie. The moves were not a single event.
  3. 1965–66Water in the valleyFilling began in mid-November 1965. In 1966 the water filled the Soła valley from Tresna to Żywiec. This is the date the lake came into being, not the date of a ceremony.
  4. 12 November 1967Opening of the damThe Tresna dam and the Soła cascade were officially opened. The valley was already filled with water.

Today

If you want to see the lake

V2 pointed to two areas for viewing: the shore in Żywiec and Zarzecze (view towards Old Żywiec) and the surroundings of the Tresna dam (view towards Zadziele). V3 did not check the accessibility, regulations or safety of these places, so this is neither a recommendation nor permission to enter anywhere. Do not enter hydraulic engineering sites or railway tracks; check the local rules. The water does not show the former buildings.

A recent photograph of the lake (Lesnydzban, CC BY 4.0, 26 May 2025): Wikimedia Commons. The photograph is only a link and is not part of this page; it does not show the former buildings.

Sources and evidential limits

How we know this and what we did not check

The links come from V2. V3 did not reopen them, so it does not declare them checked. No source here is a certificate of facts.

  1. Visit Żywiec — Jezioro Żywieckie [Lake Żywiec]Distinction between the places (a city district and a separate village), the creation of the reservoir, the city centre outside the flooded area.
    visit.zywiec.pl →Status: link from V2, to be checked again.
  2. R. Płużek, „Ujarzmianie rzeki Soły” [Taming the Soła river]Czyste Gminy Żywiecczyzny 3–4/2020, pp. 8–9. Dates of the flood, the factory's move, the filling and the opening of the dam.
    PDF, p. 8 → · p. 9 →Status: link from V2. To be checked whether 1964 refers to demolitions in Old Żywiec.
  3. State Archive, unit 18879051„Zadziele — opis granic z 1843 r.” [Zadziele — description of boundaries from 1843], nine scans according to the description in V2.
    Szukaj w Archiwach [Search the Archives] →Status: link from V2; the contents of the scans were not read.
  4. Muzeum Miejskie w ŻywcuThe museum's departments as a lead for a source search (iconography, accounts, press). This is a pointer, not confirmation of the holdings.
    muzeum-zywiec.pl →Status: link from V2, the holdings were not checked.
  5. Żywieckie Towarzystwo Historyczne — biblioteka [Żywiec Historical Society — library]H. Kupczak, „Stary Żywiec — nasze utracone dziedzictwo” [Old Żywiec — our lost heritage]; R. Słonka, „Zadziele — piękna wioska” [Zadziele — a beautiful village]. Titles from V2, not read in V3.
    ŻTH — library →Status: link from V2, to be checked.

What changed compared with V2

  • Switching between scales was replaced by three sheets visible at once. With a switch, the difference of scale, which is the subject here, disappeared.
  • The calculator with a choice of scale, millimetres and a percentage margin was simplified to a single slider. The percentage margin was only another multiplier of the millimetres. The conclusion now depends on the result, whereas in V2 it always read the same.
  • The observation planner with a notebook and saving in browser storage was removed. V3 saves nothing on the device. Notes saved earlier in V2 remain under the key atlas-v2-54 and V3 neither reads nor deletes them.
  • The invented outline of the reservoir, the schematic plots A/B and the descriptions of settlement layouts without a source were removed. The missing outline is shown as a gap.
  • The external photograph was replaced with a link. The page works offline.