Böckten is a municipality in the district of Sissach in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland.
Geography
Böckten has an area, , of . Of this area, or 43.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 41.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 14.5% is settled (buildings or roads), or 1.3% is either rivers or lakes.
Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 1.8% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 6.6% and transportation infrastructure made up 5.3%. Out of the forested land, 39.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.8% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 20.6% is used for growing crops and 18.9% is pastures, while 3.5% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.
Böckten is situated in the Ergolz valley. This valley is named after Basel-Country's main river, the Ergolz, which flows into the Rhine before Basel and was already a drinking water source for the Romans. In this valley, Böckten lies between its two main neighbouring municipalities Sissach (located westward, towards Liestal and Basel) and Gelterkinden (located eastward, towards Olten).
Böckten's remaining two neighbouring municipalities – apart from the before mentioned Sissach and Gelterkinden – are the smaller Thürnen and Rickenbach, which lead into separate smaller valleys. The latter is the first municipality of the Homburg valley, which leads towards the Hauenstein hills.
Böckten's center lies 385 meters above sea level. However, its hills (in the forests) reach up to 740 meters.
General information
While Böckten has grown together with Gelterkinden during the 1980s and 1990s, it remains separate from Sissach to this day. Nevertheless, it is mainly attached to Sissach in administrative matters (e.g. school system, church). Its location between these bigger municipalities, that both possess an express train railway station, makes Böckten much more connected to the nearby centers (most notably Basel and Liestal) than most other localities of comparable size.
Unlike in neighbouring Sissach and Gelterkinden, there are no church bells in Böckten to wake you at 6am.
History
Böckten was first mentioned as Bettinghofen, which became simplified to Bettinchon (first mentioned in 1246), which in turn changed to Betkon (first mentioned in 1339). In the Middle Ages Böckten belonged to the earl of Homburg. Its governance changed several times until it came to Basel in 1467. After the establishing of the Gotthard Pass, the Bischofstein castle was built and completed in 1311 in order to secure the region. It was destroyed due to the 1356 Basel earthquake, which affected the whole region. It has since then been restored.
Not unlike many Swiss agglomerations, Böckten has witnessed a building boom from the 1980s onwards, which quickly doubled its population from below 400 in 1980 to over 700 in 1991.
Demographics
Böckten has a population () of . , 7.3% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of 12.1%.
Most of the population () speaks German (605 or 90.4%), with Albanian being second most common (13 or 1.9%) and Italian language being third (12 or 1.8%). There are 8 people who speak French and 1 person who speaks Romansh.
, the gender distribution of the population was 50.3% male and 49.7% female. The population was made up of 715 Swiss citizens (91.7% of the population), and 65 non-Swiss residents (8.3%) Of the population in the municipality 199 or about 29.7% were born in Böckten and lived there in 2000. There were 226 or 33.8% who were born in the same canton, while 159 or 23.8% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 72 or 10.8% were born outside of Switzerland.
In there were 10 live births to Swiss citizens and were 5 deaths of Swiss citizens. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens increased by 5 while the foreign population remained the same. There was 1 Swiss man who emigrated from Switzerland. At the same time, there was 1 non-Swiss man who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was an increase of 14 and the non-Swiss population decreased by 2 people. This represents a population growth rate of 1.6%.