Chusovaya River - History

History

The river had long been inhabited by people, as evident from numerous Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements found on the river banks. In the Middle Ages, the river basin was mostly populated by Bashkirs, Mansi and Komi-Permyaks. It is assumed that the Battle of Chulmandore, in which Komi-Permyaks defeated Mongols, occurred near the river mouth. The Chusovaya River was first mentioned in 1396 in the Novgorod chronicles. Russians started active explorations of the Urals in the early 16th century, and the first Russian settlement Nizhnechusovskie Gorodki appeared on Chusovaya in 1568. From 1579, the garrison of this settlement was headed by the Russian explorer Ermak. The entire river basin was then owned by merchants Stroganov. Stroganovs in particular supplied the expedition of Ermak in the autumn of 1581 up the Chusovaya and beyond the Urals.

Subsequently, the vast lands beyond the Urals, including the upper Chusovaya, were given to Demidov, and the border between the possessions of Stroganov and Demidov was at the river Mezhevaya Utka. Demidov was actively exploring the rich local deposits in his lands and built several iron works, including Polevskoy (1722), Vasilyevo-Shaitansky (1732), Sredneuralskiy (1734) and Seversky (1735).

Before construction of the railway across the Urals, the river served as an important route for transporting metals and fur from the Urals to the western Russia. The first port for this purpose was built in the mouth of the Utka tributary in 1703 by the orders of Peter the Great. Every spring, with the start of the flood, heavily loaded barges were sent from the wharf in the upper Chusovaya to Perm. It was rather difficult to navigate heavy wooden ships through the fast and winding river and many were crashing to the coastal cliffs. About 50 barges had major accidents between 1857 and 1861 on the Chusovaya. In the spring of 1877 alone, 47 barges sank drowning more than 100 men, 23 of those barges crashed at one and the same cliff Brigand (Russian: Разбойник). Massive efforts were spent in the 17–19 centuries to improve the navigation conditions on Chusovaya. The most dangerous shore cliffs were blown up with dynamite, including the Brigand (this was one of the world's first controlled underwater explosions) Smaller boulders protruding at the river center were removed, and hundreds mooring poles had been installed. Logs were set up in the places where the currents tended to wash up boats on the rocks in order to soften the impact. These measures drastically reduced the number of accidents (from 10% to 4% of the total number of shipments in 1890) and the traffic on the river grew from 49,500 tonnes in 1862 to 128,800 tonnes in 1873. It then dropped to 107,200 tonnes and remained at this level through the 1890s.

The barges used on Chusovaya were sturdy wooden boats 35–40 meters long and 6–8 meters wide which could carry up to 200 tonnes. Some barges were reinforced inside with metal stripes and could sustain up to 10 navigation seasons. Barges were equipped with roaped weights, which were thrown overboard to increase the drag thereby reducing the barge speed when needed. The first steamship appeared on Chusovaya in 1841, it was a metal vessel named "Nikita Demidov". First three years, the ship was bringing barges loaded with the production of the Staroutkinsky plant between Suksun and Levshino. In 1844, there was an attempt to run the ship in the middle reaches. After a 24-day trip, she managed to pass only 200 kilometers and then crashed, once again illustrating the difficulty of navigating the river.

The shipment declined after 1878 with the opening of Gornozavodskaya Rails. Since the early 20th century, shipment of metals was nearly halted and the barges were only occasionally transporting grain and supplies. The last barge trip occurred in 1920. As a result, many settlements along the river bank had been abandoned. However, the ironworks remained and provided the Soviet Army with metal during World War II.