Usselo

Usselo is a Dutch village in the municipality of Enschede in the eastern Netherlands. It is located just west of Enschede and east of Boekelo. It has existed for over 800 years. The village has a Dutch Reformed church, a Church of the Christelijke Gemeente Nederland, a primary school and some shops. Of interest are the windmill (of the rare "Stenderkast" model), called "Wissinks Möl" ("Wissink's Mill"), and the "Usseler Es", the man-made elevation forming the heart of the village farmlands. The newly-built Grolsch Brewery is located on the road to Boekelo. Usselo's rural landscape, notably its Es, has been transformed by encroaching housing and industry.

Usselo, together with neighbouring Boekelo and Enschede, hosts the annual "Military Boekelo Enschede", an international equestrian event usually held in October. The village is also notable for being the location of the novel, "The Upstairs Room" by Johanna Reiss. She was a Jewish girl taken into a family in Usselo while hiding from the German occupation during World War II.Further literary links consist of the poets H.H. Ter Balkt, who was born in Usselo, and Willem Wilmink, who spend part of his youth in Usselo.

Usselo is the type site for the 'Usselo horizon', a distinctive charcoal rich layer found in a number of late glacial sedimentary sequences across Europe. Recent research has suggested that this layer can be correlated with similar deposits in North America and that it may be the debris horizon from a large bolide impact (Kloosterman J.B.," Correlation of the Late Pleistocene Usselo Horizon (Europe) and the Clovis Layer (North America)", Abstract of presentation to the Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union 2007, http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener/ConvenerView.asp?ref=1059).