The story
Since the 11th century, two-thirds of the territory of the present municipality of Voeren was in the county of Dalhem, which was a possession of the dukes of Brabant, and the remaining one-third in the Duchy of Limburg, which also belonged to Brabant after 1288. Both of these duchies were part of the Holy Roman Empire but they developed a relatively independent regime ruled by powerful dynasties. They successively became part of the Burgundian Netherlands, the Habsburg Netherlands, and after the Dutch Revolt, part of the Spanish, later Austrian controlled, Southern Netherlands.
During the French occupation (1794–1815), the old boundaries of the "ancien regime" were rejected and the French "département" of Ourthe was created. After the defeat of France and the end of Napoleonic Wars, this became the modern Belgium's Liège Province until 1963 when the Voer Region was detached from Liège, and became part of the province of Limburg, within Flanders.
On 11 or 12 September 1944, during World War II, Voeren was captured by the American 30th Infantry Division. With its capture, the allies had reached the Belgium–Netherlands border and crossed into the Netherlands. Hence, neighbouring Mesch became the first Dutch village to be liberated on 12 September.
From Wikipedia’s article on Voeren, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5