Langeac is one of the "thirteen large towns of Auvergne. In its early days the small market town is peopled with artisans, practitioners, people dress, a rich merchant class appears. The 16th and 17th centuries were the heyday of the city. Following the Napoleonic wars, the craft and businesses were overflowing with orders. The exploitation of wood, stone quarries, coal mines, antimony, lead, silver-fed river traffic that failed to slow the often devastating flood of the Allier. It was the railroad that solved the problem in the 1860s and, later, the workshop facilities for the maintenance and repair of locomotives.
