A mining town of 1736 by Zmeyeva mountain: for a century Russia's chief supplier of gold and silver, an eighteenth-century dam and pond, the Yekaterininskaya mine and the quiet of a mountain province.
Zmeinogorsk
Zmeinogorsk was founded in 1736 as a mine and a fortress; its fort joined the Kolyvano-Kuznetsk defensive line. The name comes from Zmeyeva ('Serpent') mountain where, by a document of 1725, snakes abounded. For more than a century the town was Russia's chief supplier of gold and silver — millions of poods of ore were raised here. From that era remain Nagorny pond and its dam — outstanding hydraulic works of the eighteenth century, fragments of the old mine and the Yekaterininskaya shaft, and two antique cannon at the museum entrance. The settlement became a town in 1952; today it has nine thousand residents and a mining museum. Zmeinogorsk is the capital of the Kolyvan cluster: Kolyvanskoye lake, the stone-cutting plant and Sinyukha are all best reached from here. The town itself rewards an evening walk by the pond and the mood of the old ore Altai, where history is not a reconstruction but the stone underfoot.
How to get there
From Barnaul along the Zmeinogorsky Trakt (about 360 kilometres) or from the Tretyakovo or Rubtsovsk stations; the town lies at the southern foot of the Kolyvan Range.
Best season
May to September for the whole cluster; the town itself — all year.
Travel tips & stories
The Nagorny pond dam is eighteenth-century engineering: see the spillway.
The museum tells the story of the Demidov mines; the cannon at the entrance are from the 1736 fortress.
All Kolyvan cluster routes start from Zmeinogorsk: make it your base.
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Local guides
- TR
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