Halten

Halten is a municipality in the district of Wasseramt in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. Halten is first mentioned in 1201 as Haltun. In 1274 it was mentioned as Halton. Halten has an area, , of . Of this area, or 61.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 21.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 18.6% is settled (buildings or roads). Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 13.1% and transportation infrastructure made up 4.4%. while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.1%. Out of the forested land, 20.2% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.1% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 47.5% is used for growing crops and 12.6% is pastures, while 1.1% is used for orchards or vine crops. The municipality is located in the Wasseramt district. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Per pale bendy sinister Gules and Argent and Sable a Tower roofed Argent. Halten has a population () of . , 5.2% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 4.4%. It has changed at a rate of 1.8% due to migration and at a rate of 2.1% due to births and deaths. Most of the population () speaks German (766 or 96.8%), with French being second most common (10 or 1.3%) and Italian being third (3 or 0.4%). the gender distribution of the population was 49.3% male and 50.7% female. The population was made up of 379 Swiss men (45.8% of the population) and 29 (3.5%) non-Swiss men. There were 400 Swiss women (48.4%) and 19 (2.3%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 204 or about 25.8% were born in Halten and lived there in 2000. There were 307 or 38.8% who were born in the same canton, while 199 or 25.2% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 57 or 7.2% were born outside of Switzerland. In there were 6 live births to Swiss citizens and were 5 deaths of Swiss citizens and 1 non-Swiss citizen death.