Dravograd
Three-river confluence with 1944 Nazi-built hydropower plant; lead mines closed in 1990s, workers now commute to Austria.
Dravograd sits where three rivers meet: the Drava arriving from Austria, the Meža from zinc mines, the Mislinja from forested uplands. The German name—Unterdrauburg—marked where the Drava left Austrian Carinthia for Styrian territory. This has always been a boundary zone, its fortunes shaped by whose side of the line it fell on.
The Nazis built a hydropower station here between 1941 and 1944—one of Europe's first pier-type plants. After the war, the power flowed to Yugoslav industry. The Meža Valley became Slovenia's most industrialized region: lead and zinc mines, a smelter at Žerjav, steel mills at nearby Ravne. In the 1990s, the mines closed. The smelter shut. Only TAB batteries and Metal Ravne's specialty steel survived.
Today Dravograd exports something the mines never could: commuters. Workers travel to Ljubljana, Maribor, Velenje, and across the border to Austria. Unemployment in the region reached 12% even before the 2008 crisis. The railway to Klagenfurt remains the town's main strategic asset—a reminder that Dravograd's purpose has always been transit, not destination.
By 2026, expect Dravograd to remain Slovenia's Carinthian outpost: economically challenged, geographically strategic, culturally distinct. The hydropower station still generates electricity. The rivers still meet. The border still matters.