Eptingen

Eptingen is a municipality in the district of Waldenburg in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. Eptingen is first mentioned in 1145 as Ebittingen. The Burgruine Witwald, also called Wild-Eptingen or younger castle , are the ruins of a hilltop castle above the settlement of Eptingen in the Swiss canton of Basel-Landschaft . You can see remains of the walls of the Palas as well as an entrance gate, a staircase and a cistern . About 300 meters southeast are the older ruins of Wild-Eptingen , probably a predecessor of Witwald Castle. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Or, an Eagle displayed fesswise Sable beaked and membered Gules. Eptingen has an area, , of . Of this area, or 47.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 47.6% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 5.2% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.1% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.3% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 2.0% and transportation infrastructure made up 2.2%. Out of the forested land, 46.0% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.6% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 7.9% is used for growing crops and 34.5% is pastures, while 2.1% is used for orchards or vine crops and 2.9% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The municipality is located in the Waldenburg district, at the foot of Belchen mountain in the Diegter valley. Eptingen has a population () of . , 4.5% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of -4.9%. Most of the population () speaks German (551 or 97.3%), with Serbo-Croatian being second most common (6 or 1.1%) and Albanian being third (4 or 0.7%). There is 1 person who speaks French. the gender distribution of the population was 53.7% male and 46.3% female. The population was made up of 491 Swiss citizens (93.2% of the population), and 36 non-Swiss residents (6.8%) Of the population in the municipality 234 or about 41.