The valley between the
Pilis and Gerecse mountains has been inhabited since the
Neolithic. A
Roman military road westwards from
Aquincum passed by the present-day town of Dorog, where Roman dwellings with floor heating have been found, along with conduits, graves and milestones. When
Hungary's kings resided at Esztergom in the 11th and 12th centuries, Dorog was where the cooks of the castle lodged. Roads from all directions met here in the
Middle Ages, and the Chapter of
Esztergom had the right to levy custom duties. The name, which appears in the form
Durug,
Drug and
Durugd, is first mentioned in an extant document in 1181. The medieval settlement, destroyed in the
Ottoman invasion, remained uninhabited from 1542 until 1649.
German settlers then arrived in three waves, followed by
Hungarians again. Dorog in the 18th century became a centre of communications again. Regular 19th-century visitors to the posting inn on the
Buda–
Vienna road included philologist
Ferenc Kazinczy, statesman
István Széchenyi and magnate Ferenc Wesselényi. New houses and streets sprang up round the
baroque Roman Catholic church built in 1767–1775. The first written contract on
mining coal at Dorog, dating from 1845, was drawn up between the Capter of
Esztergom and the colliery managers Ferenc Wasshuber and József János Jülke. Thereafter, many great engineers became involved in developing the Dorog mines, including Vilmos Zsigmondy, the
geologist Miksa Hantken, and the
mining engineers Henrik Drasche and Sándor Schmidt, who opened up and directed exploitation of richer and richer seams. Dorog, around the start of the 20th century, was a major mining centre, connected by
rail (originally
HÉV) with
Budapest and by canal with the
Danube. In 1906, Dorog's
power plant was constructed (which was rebuilt in the 1980's with a high chimney). In 1900 Dorog had 1966 inhabitants (1369
Germans, 477
Hungarians, 55
Slovaks). Budapest's factories and population needed more and more coal in the
interwar period, so Dorog developed rapidly. Several housing colonies for the immigrant miners were built in the 1920's and 1930's. So were a large worker's hostel, a new
Catholic church, a
Reformed church in Transylvanian style (which was constructed by
Transylvanian coalminers who moved there after the
Treaty of Trianon), two new schools, a kindergarten, a modern hospital, a mine manager's club, mine manager's residences, a
town hall, a World War I memorial and a recreation ground. Most of these were designed by the engineer Zoltán Gáthy. Some 300 men of Dorog lost their lives in the Second World War. A few years after the war, many Germans were expelled. During the
socialist era, Dorog became a typical socialist town with prefabricated
blocks of flats. The mines gradually closed, so the
government planted several factories (
Gedeon Richter company,
Hungaroton record plant, a machine factory). Dorog became a town in 1984, the
industrial park was established in 1999. ==Economy==