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Aatal

valley in the canton of Zurich

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 22, 2025
Entity authorityQ303730
Source-derived summary

The Aatal (Aa Valley) is a narrow, steep valley of about 40 metres (130 ft) depth surrounded by forests. It is situated between the towns of Wetzikon and Uster in the canton of Zürich, Switzerland.

Through the valley flows the river Aabach, which starts at the effluence of the southern end of the Pfäffikersee and then enters Wetzikon where the river makes a U-turn in the middle of the town towards a southwestern direction before it enters the valley. After the valley of about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) the Abbach enters Uster, where it also used to be called Usterner Aa, runs through Uster in a western direction before it enters the Greifensee about in the middle of the lake's eastern shore, near Niederuster.

The hamlet of Aathal in the middle of the valley belongs to the municipality of Seegräben.

The Aa Valley is a significant traffic artery. It connects the metropolitan area of Zurich with the municipalities of the Zürich Oberland (Zurich Highlands). In addition to the heavy traffic on the national expressway between Uster and Wetzikon the three S-Bahn railway lines S5, S14, and S15 traverse the valley, each at a half-hourly clock-face schedule so that in average every 5 minutes a train passes through the valley. The S14 stops in Aathal half-hourly.

Besides the buildings of different former spinning mills, which are connected by an industrial teaching path, one finds also the Aathal Dinosaur Museum in Aathal.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Aatal” as valley in the canton of Zurich. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 240-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Aatal, valley and canton can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as valley in the canton of Zurich. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q303730. VIAF identifies the subject as 236440216. Authority coordinates are 47.340, 8.757. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Aatal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.