Stadskanaal (Netherlands)

Stadskanaal (Dutch pronunciation: [ˌstɑtskaːˈnaːl] ) is a town and municipality in the province of Groningen in the northeast of the Netherlands. It was named after the canal Stadskanaal which literally means "City Canal" and it is a linear village. In the Gronings dialect the town is called "Knoal" and the locals are called "Knoalsters". From 1800 until 1900 this area was ideal for its peat mining, and so the canal came to ship all the peat to Groningen, the capital of the province. With industrialization, many of Stadskanaal's peat colony features, as well as many of its characteristic shophouses, were lost. The town now has 19,060 inhabitants (2023), making it one of the largest towns in the province. Together with Nieuw-Buinen, located across the provincial Drenthe border (the straight-line Semslinie), it forms a double core with just under 24,000 inhabitants. The Stadskanaal municipality overall has a population of 32,715. The municipality of Stadskanaal was created on 1 January 1969, by merging the former municipality of Onstwedde with part of the former municipality of Wildervank.