Scafa

The name is a boat. «Scafa» was one of the points where the river Pescara could be crossed by small craft and ferries, and for centuries the place was just that: a crossing. Roman traces remain, linked to the working of minerals, and then emptiness: the area stayed uninhabited for a long time and from the Middle Ages belonged to the nearby town of San Valentino in Abruzzo Citeriore.

What made it a village was the railway. From the second half of the nineteenth century the Rome-Sulmona-Pescara line and the station of San Valentino brought here the industry that was moving up the valley: first the extraction and processing of asphalt, then metalworking, clothing, building materials, oil. The houses gathered around the station, and the place was called Stazione di San Valentino until 1948, when it broke away and took back the name of the ford. Of the older work there remains the Mulino Farnese, of the seventeenth century, and above the village the sulphurous springs of the Lavino.