It was on today's military training ground at Elsenborn that the border between the duchies of Jülich and Luxembourg ran in former centuries. At that time, the difficult terrain was used by the inhabitants of the villages of Elsenborn (Duchy of Luxembourg) and Kalterherberg (Duchy of Jülich) as pasture for the livestock – above all the sheep – but also for the procurement of hay and straw. Because of the imprecise boundary marking, however, the shepherds and farmers of the two villages repeatedly got involved in disputes about the actual course of the boundary, and that, indeed, led to the ‘abduction’ of the Elsenborn sheep flock to Kalterherberg in 1664. This ‘border war’ went on for a long time, for it was not until 1791 that the tough terrain was remeasured and the boundary painstakingly marked out with stones. However, the boundary became obsolete again just four years later, because the French had conquered the area and dissolved the old duchies. Even today, a row of stones marks the former boundary, and in fact the boundary ditch is still preserved in some places. A few boundary stones, some of which were damaged, have been removed and re-erected near the Truschbaum (Lagerstrasse, not far from the water tower) for their own protection. This beech, which lived to be approximately 200 years old and presumably stood out for a long time as the only tree in the landscape, served the people as a striking landmark in the Fens. In January 1984, however, the old, sick tree fell victim to a winter storm and was replaced by a new beech in the autumn of the same year.
