Stäfa

Stäfa is a municipality in the district of Meilen in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland.

Geography

Stäfa has an area of 8.6 km² (3.3 sq mi). Of this area, 46.1% is used for agricultural purposes, while 18.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 34% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (1%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains).In 1996 housing and buildings made up 26.7% of the total area, while transportation infrastructure made up the rest (7.2%). Of the total unproductive area, water (streams and lakes) made up 0.5% of the area. As of 2007 35.8% of the total municipal area was undergoing some type of construction.

It is located near Rapperswil on the north bank of the Lake Zürich in the Pfannenstiel region.

In the local dialect it is called Stäfa.

The villages of Kehlhof and Uerikon are politically part of the town. Stäfa is linked with the German poet Goethe who once stayed overnight in the town. It was named after the Scottish island of Staffa by a monk from Iona.

Zürichsee-Schifffahrtsgesellschaft

The Zürichsee-Schifffahrtsgesellschaft or Lake Zürich Navigation Company (commonly abbreviated to ZSG) is a public Swiss company operating passenger ships and boats on Lake Zürich.

The company operates services connecting lake-side towns between Zürich and Rapperswil, as well as more tourist oriented cruises and boat services on the Limmat through the centre of the city of Zürich. It is a member of the Zürich Public Transport Network (ZVV) and transports over 1,5 million passengers every year.

The ZSG is a joint stock company with a share capital of 11 million Swiss Francs (CHF). The share capital – one third is in private hands – is divided into 110,000 bearer shares, each with a nominal value of CHF 100.

History

Steam navigation started on Lake Zürich in 1834, when Franz Carl Caspar and Johann Jakob Lämmlin founded a new company (Caspar und Lämmlin, Unternehmer der Dampfschiffahrt auf dem Zürcher- und Walensee) and ordered their first ship from William Fairbairn of Manchester, England. The Minerva entered service the following year. When the cuty fortifications were abolished, the then called Bauschänzli bastion remained intact, and served from 1835 to 1883 as the landing site for the first steamboats on the lake, later provided by the Zürichsee-Schifffahrtsgesellschaft.