Usolye-Sibirskoye is a town in Irkutsk Oblast

Irkutsk Oblast

Irkutsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in southeastern Siberia in the basins of Angara River, Lena, and Nizhnyaya Tunguska Rivers. The administrative center is the city of Irkutsk. Population: -History:...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, located on the left bank of the Angara River

Angara River

The Angara River is a long river in Irkutsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai, south-east Siberia, Russia. It is the only river flowing out of Lake Baikal, and is the headwater tributary of the Yenisei River....

. Population:

History

It was founded in 1669 under the name Usolye, an archaic Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 word for a salt producing town, by Mikhalevs brothers, the Cossacks who had discovered salt deposits in a nearby spring.

The Siberian Route

Siberian Route

The Siberian Route , also known as the Moscow Route and Great Route , was a historic route that connected European Russia to Siberia and China. Previously Siberian transport had been mostly by river via Siberian River Routes...

 was built through the town in the 18th century, followed in the late 19th century by the Trans-Siberian Railway

Trans-Siberian Railway

The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. It is the longest railway in the world...

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Town status was granted to it in 1925. The town's name was given the extension Sibirskoye (Siberian) in 1940, to differentiate from the town of Usolye in the Kama River

Kama River

Kama is a major river in Russia, the longest left tributary of the Volga and the largest one in discharge; in fact, it is larger than the Volga before junction....

 region.

From 1947 until 1953, the town was site for a prison camp of the gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

 system.

Economy and infrastructure

Ever since its inception, the main industry of the town has been salt-mining. The opening of a major mine in 1956 saw the town become Russia's largest producer of table salt, as well as the development of related chemical industries such as Usolyekhimprom.

There is also heavy machinery assembly, including mining equipment produced by the company Usolyemash.

The town has a station on the Trans Siberian Railway, it is also located on the highway from Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...

 to Irkutsk

Irkutsk

Irkutsk is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population: .-History:In 1652, Ivan Pokhabov built a zimovye near the site of Irkutsk for gold trading and for the collection of fur taxes from the Buryats. In 1661, Yakov Pokhabov...

.

A light rail network has operated in the town since the 1960s, originally funded by the salt mine.