The story of the region

   The Apuseni Mountains are first mentioned in the Histories of Herodot (513 b. Ch) who refers to the 'agatarsi' - tracs from the Mures valley- producers of gold, that was extracted from the Apuseni Mountains.

    The central area  of the Apuseni Mountains was called by the Romans 'Tierra Biharia'. In 1567, Zundt,  from  Nurnberg names in his work the mountains between Oradea and Cluj as the 'Kaldte Monts'. In 1571, Sambucus names the same area as 'M. Kalati' after the Calata (Kalota) region, mane which appears on Visher's map for the first time in 1624. The  name Bihor appears for the first time on Reiner's (1682) and Voigt's (1689) maps. On Visconti's map (1699) the name of 'Bihor Mons' appears. On Hell's map from Tabula geogr. Ungarie (1772) the mountains from which the Crisul Repede River and the Somesul Mic River streams are called 'Nyr Sylva' or ' Sylva Igfon'. In Gorog's Atlas (1802) the name 'Bihar' is found as well as the first mentioning of the highest peak -' Kukurbita'. In the same work, on the 'Bihar Varmegye' sheet it is marked the 'Zire Bihari Hegy' peak (hegy=mountain). Peters (1861) first mentions the Padis Plato, on the geographical map of the Apuseni Mountains, made after an expedition  organized by the Vienna Science Academy. The geographer on the same expedition was Schmidt, who makes an wide and serious description of the Bihor Mountains in his book published in Vienna in 1863 -' Das Bihar Gebirge' (the Bihor Area). This books makes the first map of the Scarisoara Glacia. The way the author found out about the underground glaciars is very interesting: he ate ice cream in the middle of the summer in Beius, finding out that the ice is brought by the locals from a cave. In 1884 Bielz describes 73 natural cavities (caves) in the Transylvanian karst.  . In 1886 Hazay makes the first mentioning of the Cetatile Ponorului. (the Ponor Fortress) . At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ardelean jurist Czaran Gyula dedicates his whole life and most of his fortune to exploring the Bihor karst, publishing some tourist guides, printed in 1903 at Beius.

    With the founding of the first world Speological Institute at Cluj-Napoca in 1920, under the guidance of Emil Racovita, the speological patrimony of the Apuseni Mountains started to be more substatilally known. A special effort was made by Puscariu with his numerous works published in the Touristic Annual Publication of the Romanian Tourist Group. The long activity of geological research sustained by Bleahu and Bordea in the area allowed them to elaborate a series of valuable tourist guides of great value, from which the one published in 1981 - Bihor-Vladeasa- is a major work.

    The oldest (and in fact the only one) mountain permanent resort in the neighborhood is Stana de Vale, founded in 1883, but truly developed in 1932. In the Padis area, the first arrangement was s big cabin built on the structure of an older building in 1956. this burned in 1967, being just an appendix until 1963, to which a modest house was added. In 1975 the old appendix burned too, and in the 80s a new construction was added - the check-in basis .  But the check-in capacity today is totally inadequate for the tourist flux today which got to be over 60.000 in 1997.