For four hundred years Handlová was a German farming and forest village at the end of the road, and its history is the ordinary history of such places: clearing, grazing, timber, a church, bad years. Coal in the valley is first recorded in 1784, and at first it was used only locally — small workings, cart-loads, some of it burned at Bojnice castle. That is exactly the point: the coal had been there all along, and without a railway or a furnace that wanted it, it was worth almost nothing. The eighteenth century knew there was coal under Handlová and could do nothing whatever with the knowledge.Štyristo rokov bola Handlová nemeckou roľníckou a lesníckou dedinou na konci cesty a jej dejiny sú obyčajnými dejinami takých miest: klčovanie, paša, drevo, kostol, zlé roky. Uhlie v doline sa prvý raz spomína v roku 1784 a spočiatku sa využívalo len miestne — malé diela, pár vozov, niečo z neho sa kúrilo na bojnickom hrade. Práve v tom je pointa: uhlie tu bolo celý čas, a kým nebola železnica ani pec, ktorá by ho chcela, nemalo takmer žiadnu cenu. Osemnáste storočie vedelo, že pod Handlovou je uhlie, a nevedelo s tým urobiť vôbec nič.
