Voh
commune in New Caledonia, France
Voh (French: [vo], Pwapwâ: Vook) is a commune in the North Province of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean.
It has become famous for the aerial photography of what is known as The Heart of Voh, a large formation of vegetation that resembles a heart seen from above. Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand contributed to its popularity by using a photograph of the 'heart' as the dust jacket art to his books The Earth from the Air and Earth from Above.
Voh is also the closest large settlement to the enormous Koniambo mine, and it hosted indentured Vietnamese mineworkers from the late 1800s until the 1940s, termed the Chân Dăng.
Colonial establishment
In 1865 Kanak warriors killed workers constructing a fort at Pouangué (Gatope), and it was abandoned in 1869. In 1891 the French administration decided the vallée de Voh would be a good place for French free settlers. Land for farming was reportedly renounced voluntarily by the Kanak inhabitants, on the right bank of the river. At this time, there were no roads. Some 950 ha was surveyed by Piarchi, and lots of 0.15 ha to 380 ha were handed out for housing and livestock farming. By late 1892 23 Europeans including Georges Weiss, Jean-François Jocteur, Alexandre Paulaud and Claude Rousson, Jean-Baptiste Mirandon and former army officers Pancrace Mainard and Marin Poncet arrived and began building and farming.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Voh” as commune in New Caledonia, France. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as commune in New Caledonia, France. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q9757. Authority coordinates are -20.967, 164.700. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1865, 1869, 1891 and 1892.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Voh” 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.