The town has a long tradition of manufacturing in a wide range of sectors such as paper milling, quarrying, engineering, plastics, textiles, clothing and telecommunications.

'Étape' has mutated from the word 'Tape' which was the name given to the right to transit the territory, obtained in return for a toll which was imposed on merchants, whether moving their goods along the river or along the adjacent road.

The old village was founded in the thirteenth century on the 'champ de Rua', near the confluence of the Plaine and Meurthe rivers, and dominated by Beauregard Castle which had been rebuilt and extended by Frederick III, Duke of Lorraine.

Geography also favoured commerce with the presence of two navigable rivers, and economic success was assured through civic privileges conferred by the dukes and through the security afforded by the growth of fortifications and the maintenance of a military garrison.

On the left bank of the river, the hamlet of La Neuveville dates back further, having been established during the twelfth century with protection and support from Duke of Lorraine by the cannons of Étival Abbey who provided both the necessary land and the expertise.

Their strategic position meant that both towns suffered badly in the Second World War, and the remaining residents were strongly supported by humanitarian aid from, in particular, the Swiss Red Cross in the years immediately following the conflagration.

Although the two communes had been intended by their founders as complementary settlements, long centuries of rivalry were not so easily set aside, and the different banks of the river continue to value their separate histories.

The weather seems to have contributed an above average quota of poor or failed harvests, while the Thirty Years' War unleashed a catalogue of horrors, especially on the territories such as Lorraine that found themselves buffered between two great continental powers of that time, France and The Empire.

the violent and destructive manifestations of the French Revolution and the battles of the ensuing Napoleonic Wars occurred far from Lorraine, though the district suffered its share of economic disruption and the mobilisation of fighting age men.

After the French imperial army of Napoleon III was defeated at Sedan on 2 September 1870, and faced with the advance of enemy troops further south in the Vosges region, resistance mobilised rapidly, as disparate companies of Gardes Mobiles and of irregular guerilla fighters sprang to arms.

After the Peace signed at Frankfurt on 10 May 1871, Raon was garrisoned by a battalion of the 9th Pomeranian Regiment who were initially billeted on the citizens, and subsequently installed in a barracks that was completed by the end of December 1871.