Woods stretch out south of the village at the reservoir's shore, with a grove of sequoias, and also in the northern municipal area.

Likewise older building is found on Triftstraße, with the old schoolhouse (now a community centre and clubhouse), on Schlossbergstraße, Friedhofstraße, Goethestraße, on the north side of Raiffeisenring and Bahnhofstraße.

The Catholic youth centre, at which church services are also held once a week, stands in the village's north end on Sportplatzstraße.

[6] From the contiguous Free Imperial Domain (freies Reichsland) around Castle Lautern, Frankish kings split certain areas away in the Early Middle Ages to donate them to both ecclesiastical and secular lordships.

As a fief of the Hornbach Monastery with its hub at Glan-Münchweiler, all villages in the Münchweiler valley passed in 1323 first to the Raugraves in the Nahegau, and thereafter, in 1344, to the Archbishop of Trier and then to the Breidenborns.

By the entry in this book, the municipalities of the Münchweiler Tal (an administrative entity belonging to Hornbach Monastery near Zweibrücken) swore an oath of loyalty to their new lady, Agnes von Neuenbaumberg.

The date that he names is 10 August 1427, on which day a number of persons donated a plot of land to Johann von Breidenborn.

Finally, in the 15th century, the Counts of Leyen came into partial, and later full, ownership of Gries and the other villages in the Amt of Münchweiler (Glan-Münchweiler, Nanzweiler, Dietschweiler, Börsborn, Steinbach and Haschbach) through marriage.

At the same time, Abbot Ulrich of the Hornbach Monastery granted Jörge von der Leyen, a Burgmann at Castle Lautern, the Münchweiler Tal.

Their holdings included Gries and the other villages in the Amt of Münchweiler (Glan-Münchweiler, Nanzweiler, Dietschweiler, Börsborn, Steinbach and Haschbach).

Thereafter, the monastery itself was slowly forsaken by the monks in the course of the Reformation, until in the end, the last abbot, Johann Kinthausen, went as far as to get married and become Protestant.

Because the Leyens retained the old beliefs – that is, Catholicism (after all, the family, whose roots were in Gondorf on the Moselle, had produced several Archbishops of both Trier and Mainz) – religious matters were very problematic, with disputes breaking out several times between them and the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, who had embraced Protestantism.

During French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest, it is likely that the village was destroyed once again, although this time without the great loss of population.

The oldest map on which Gries appears (compiled in 1564 by the geometer Tilemann Stella), for instance, is to be found at the Swedish Imperial Archive in Stockholm.

After Count Franz Karl von der Leyen's death in 1775, his wife Marianne, who was popular among the people, took over the regency for their not yet grown son Philipp.

A few decades after the House of Leyen had moved its main residence from Koblenz to Blieskastel and expanded this town on the Blies in its representative style, French Revolutionary troops came marching in.

The last countess, who was both legendary and popular, Countess Marianne von der Leyen, managed to flee during the occupation of Blieskastel by French Revolutionary troops in 1793, seeking refuge first in Koblenz with the local people's support, and later by way of Karlsberg Castle and Glan-Münchweiler to kin in Frankfurt in the Grand Duchy of Hesse over on the Rhine’s right bank.

Under French rule after 1801, Gries lay in the Department of Sarre, whose seat was at Trier, in the Arrondissement of Saarbrücken, in the Canton of Waldmohr and in the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Miesau.

After a transitional time, the Rhine District (Rheinkreis) was founded, but later called Pfalz in the Kingdom of Bavaria, which had acquired these lands under the terms laid out by the Congress of Vienna.

Within the Kingdom of Bavaria, Gries belonged to the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Schönenberg, the Canton of Waldmohr and the Landkommissariat (later Bezirksamt and Landkreis – district) of Homburg (then in the Palatinate, today in the Saarland) in the Rheinkreis.

After the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles stipulated, among other things, that 26 of the Sankt Wendel district's 94 municipalities had to be ceded to the British- and French-occupied Saar.

After the Second World War, the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was founded, Gries ceased to be part of Bavaria and its 8th Regierungsbezirk and it then belonged to the Bezirksamt of Kusel.

Gries's attractive location and cultural life have made it a sought-after residential community, leading to a rise in population, especially as houses were being built in the extensive new building zones.

To be borne in mind here is that at first, the House of Leyen (the lords) usually deferred to any decisions on matters of religion made by the County Palatine of Zweibrücken (the overlords).

Further Catholics settled the area as a result of the re-population efforts during French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest.

The charge on the dexter (armsbearer's right, viewer's left) side, the abbot's staff, is a reference to the village's former allegiance to the old Hornbach Monastery.

The composition on the sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side is drawn from the arms formerly borne by the House of Leyen, who were once lords in Gries.

Other customs, mainly for children, such as Shrovetide (locally Fastnacht), Walpurgis Night (locally Hexen in der Mainacht, or “Witches on May Day Eve”), the Pfingstquack (see the Blaubach and Dennweiler-Frohnbach articles for an explanation of this custom, and also this German-language external link) and the Saint Martin's Day parade, among others, largely correspond with those observed in other villages.

A newer schoolhouse, which is also preserved and which is now used as a community centre and clubhouse, was built in 1877 on Triftstraße with two classrooms on separate floors and with a belltower.

[20] Even though the great highways are easy to reach from Gries, the village itself does not lie on the long-distance roads, ensuring very light traffic.