The Mont Mézenc is a mountain range in the Massif Central, bordering the departments of Ardèche and Haute-Loire, making up a natural region of France.

This situation is undoubtedly at the origin of its name, which is derived from the pre-Latin word mège, like other primitive frontiers such as Mèje, Mèjane, Montmège, Montméa, Medze, Mezenc, etc.

It wasn't until the mid-18th century that Puei-Vuei began to be referred to as Mont Mézenc, under the influence of the Montilian volcanologist Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond.

In Antiquity, the massif formed the border between the Gallo-Roman cities of Alba and Saint-Paulien, while in the Middle Ages, it separated the dioceses of Viviers (Ardèche) and Le Puy (Haute-Loire).

[7] During the Second World War, the massif was a refuge for children hunted down by Nazi forces and their collaborators, becoming a bastion of civil resistance.

This agriculture is exclusively focused on livestock farming, mainly suckler cattle (18,000 head), but also dairy cows (around 6,000) and sheep.

It covers the communes of Le Béage, Borée, La Rochette, Chaudeyrolles, Les Estables and Saint-Front, with a total surface area of 4,300 hectares.

However, in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it attracted the attention of travelers, botanists, geologists, geographers and members of learned societies who undertook to describe it for their contemporaries.

Among these observers, Aimé Giron described the Estables region as follows: "It has a detestable reputation for bad weather, ignorance and destitution.

[...] The low houses, topped with straw or thatch, seem to crouch in cold against the earth [...] It's a Lapp village transplanted to the Velay.

Or George Sand, who, in her travel diary, describes her trip to Les Estables in June 1859: "This is a country without paths or guides, without any means of communication, and where you have to conquer all your discoveries at the price of danger and fatigue.

I find here a very characteristic race that is in harmony with the soil that bears it: lean, dark, rough and as if angular in its forms and instincts [...]".