The Babinov Road (Бабиновская дорога) was for a long time the shortest path across the

Urals The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

. It led from

Solikamsk Solikamsk (, , also Соликамскӧй, ''Sovkamsköy'') is a town in Perm Krai, Russia. Modern Solikamsk is the third-largest town in the krai, with a population of History The earliest surviving recorded mention of Solikamsk, initially a ...

Verkhoturye Verkhoturye () is a historical town and the administrative center of Verkhotursky District of Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, located in the middle Ural Mountains on the left bank of the Tura River north of Yekaterinburg. Population: 7,815 ( ...

and thence to

Tobolsk Tobolsk (, ) is a town in Tyumen Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Tobol and Irtysh rivers. Founded in 1587, Tobolsk is the second-oldest Russian settlement east of the Ural Mountains in Asian Russia, and was the historic capita ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. It was discovered by

Artemy Babinov Artemy Safronovich Babinov (Артемий Сафронович Бабинов), a Russian explorer from the village of Verkh-Usolka, discovered the shortest path across the Urals from Solikamsk in the Perm region to Verkhoturye in the east in 159 ...

in 1597 and hacked out of the forests several years later, replacing a complicated river route that had been used in the 16th century. It was the construction of the Babinov Road that made possible the Russian colonization of

and the enormous territorial growth of the

Tsardom of Russia The Tsardom of Russia, also known as the Tsardom of Moscow, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of tsar by Ivan the Terrible, Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721. ...

in the 17th century. The route was apparently based on an existing trail used by

Khanty The Khanty (), also known in older literature as Ostyaks (), are a Ugric Indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as " Yugra" in Russia, together with the Mansi. In the autonomous okrug, the K ...

and

Mansi Mansi may refer to: * Mansi people, an Indigenous people of Russia ** Mansi language *Mansi (name), given name and surname *Mansi Junction railway station * Mansi Township, Myanmar ** Mansi, Myanmar, a town in the Kachin State of Myanmar (Burma) * ...

hunters. In the 17th century, Russian travellers to Siberia passed through a chain of small forts protecting the road from raids by native tribes.

, the first of these forts, was built at its eastern end in 1598. Babinov's Road remained the only practicable route from

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

until the construction of the Great Siberian Road in 1735.

References

External links

The map of Babinov Road
{{Russia-history-stub Roads in Russia Roads in Siberia History of Siberia