A former village of Duga Resa, a small settlement in past and a town in Central Croatia today, has been first mentioned in 1380.
There are several explanations regarding the origin of its name:
according to one of them, the name derives from the word "resa", a tassel on folk costumes,
the other connects it with a continental plant "resa", a catkin that used to cover the entire area,
the third derives its name from the aquatic plant "resina".
* Some people, however, tend to connect the town's name with that of the lady innkeper Reza, the proprietress of the former inn in Duga Resa.
The history of the settlement emerges from the Middle Ages, but it's only with the cotton industry appearing in 1884 that the small village turns into an industrial locality gaining a status of a municipal centre in 1896 and a status of town in 1993, after the establishment of the independent and sovereign Republic of Croatia.
Demographic data
At the beginning of the 19th century, Duga Resa had about 3000 inhabitants. The Town of Duga Resa with its 58 km2 is one of the smaller units of the local self-government in the County of Karlovac occupying merely 1.6% of the county's entire territory.
There are 12 000 inhabitants living in the town-area with a population density of 208.9 inhabitants per square kilometre, which is five times more in relation to the county's average of 38.9 and to the republic average of 78.4 inhabitants per km2.
The census demonstrates an unfavourable trend due to the decrease of the number of inhabitants.
Location
The area of the Town of Duga Resa is located in the contact zone of the Highland and Pannonian Croatia. From the traffic and geographic point of view, the area of the County of Karlovac, with the Town of Duga Resa in it, is of a special importance for the integration of the Croatian physical space, valorised by the Physical Development Programme and a Traffic Development Strategy of the Republic of Croatia as the only connection between the continental and coastal part of Croatia.
Geographic and traffic importance of Duga Resa was especially emphasized in 1780 by the construction of the Emperor Josephs' Road that branched off from the Carolingian Road, leading to Senj over Zvečaj.
A stronger economic growth of Duga Resa was initiated by the construction of the railway track Karlovac - Rijeka through Duga Resa in 1873. Traffic flows and settlings of the area date from ancient and Roman times that the local archeologial site of Sveti Petar Mrežnicki belongs to.
