Gold rush at any time and in all countries caused excitement, excitement, an increase in the number of crimes, the enrichment of some and the ruin of their other participants. A lot of adventure books have been written about them, where there are brave pioneers, prospectors and villains who want to take the gold they extracted with hard work.
Everything happened differently in tsarist Russia, which was the first to bother to survive the gold rush, but there were neither adventures nor successful prospectors, since the main events unfolded in the days of serfdom. It all started with the Berezovsky mine near Yekaterinburg.
Golden find
The city of Berezovsky "came into being" after the discovery of a gold deposit near the river of the same name, flowing 12 km from Yekaterinburg. The find was accidental, but this day went down in history as the beginning of gold mining in tsarist Russia.
May 21, 1745 (June 1, according to a new style) Erofei Markov, conducting surveys on the banks of the river in search of rock crystal, discovered ore with golden inclusions. Being a faithful and honest man, he took the found nugget to the office of the head of the Ural mountain factories, so that experts would check it for the presence of precious metal.
Gold was indeed discovered in the ore, but further searches for its deposit have not yielded results for another 2 years. It came to the point that Erofei Markov was accused of hiding the true place where he found a gold-bearing breed, but he was soon released on bail by fellow villagers under house arrest.
It was only in 1747 that the first deposit was found, which later became the Berezovsky mine, and a year later a small working village grew near it, where serfs, free miners and artisans drove to work. Extraction of ore gold with the primitive equipment that was in Russia at that time, and the constant deepening into the mine led to numerous deaths and injuries to serfs. But, as they said, there were a lot of this “product” in the country, therefore new batches of serfs were sent to replace the dead.
Gold ore
This method of mining precious metals is an expensive and dangerous enterprise. All work was carried out by serfs in the dark adits of the mine, standing knee-deep in the water. The extracted ore was piled in baskets and brought to the surface by hand.
Further processing of the material was carried out at the gold mill, built near the Berezovsky gold mines, where it was crushed and washed until all the debris settled, and the so-called black concentrate, containing grains of gold, remained in the hands of the craftsmen.
Horrible working conditions, high mortality from injuries and illnesses caused by cold and constant standing in icy water would have continued if it had not been for the stubbornness of one mining engineer.
Bulk gold deposit
Brusnitsyn Lev Ivanovich worked as a mining engineer in the Ural gold mines. Neither the working conditions of the workers nor the method of mining the precious metal satisfied him, so he spent several years of his life trying to find another deposit that did not require such sacrifices and investments.
He acted in circumvention of the ban imposed on prospecting in this area, when in 1814 his attempts were successful, and he found the largest deposit of alluvial gold in the valleys of Pyshma and Berezovka.
In the same year, not only the mine itself, which was called the Berezovsky Mines, was opened, but the entire production of its mining was also completely refitted. The same Brusnitsyn designed and built special machines for washing the rock, which significantly accelerated the extraction of precious metals, cheapened it and facilitated the labor of serfs.
Thanks to stubbornness and faith in the wealth of the Russian land of one person, Russia for 30 years has become a power, a leader in the extraction and processing of gold. In addition, it enriched the region and made Yekaterinburg free from provincial influence. For the 50, 000 inhabitants of the city, Berezovsky gold mines have become a place of work. At least 2, 000 people living in it worked in mines and mines.
Gold Rush in Yekaterinburg
As it turned out, there was so much of this precious metal in the rivers adjacent to Yekaterinburg that its inhabitants literally walked along it. The sand, which was used to lay the pavements, contained the smallest grains of gold. Such wealth did not leave the townspeople indifferent, and not only they began to hunt by washing gold-bearing sand, but also people who came from other parts of the country. Thus began the Russian gold rush, thanks to which new mines were found and developed.
For example, two engineers, inspired by Brusnitsyn’s find, discovered a large metal deposit in the Melkovka River in 1817. They planned to open a private gold mining enterprise, but the Russian authorities did not allow this, having bought the site for a large fee. Now in the Urals not only the Berezovsky gold mines worked. Both other mines and mines have become a source of wealth for Russia, which by then had taken a leading position in this industry.
The wealth of Siberia
Due to the fact that gold was found in the Urals, the attention of Russian industrialists and merchants turned to the bowels of Siberia. Large deposits were also discovered here, and since Yekaterinburg became the center of gold mining, and it contained the most advanced chemical laboratory at that time, wealth flowed from the Siberian mines into the city.
The main burden on the extraction of precious metals and gems fell on the shoulders of serfs, whose labor was still difficult and dangerous. Now they were driven to work not only at the gold Berezovsky mines, but also other deposits were developed through free slavery.
City Status
For a short time (from 1830 to 1861), Yekaterinburg was in a state of war and was guarded by the army, obeying the commander in chief. The city was ruled by the head of mining enterprises, the Minister of Finance, and personally the sovereign. Only the abolition of serfdom changed the hard labor conditions at the Berezovsky mines, but it also hit the development of the entire gold mining industry. People did not want to work for a penny in such conditions.
Unfortunately, the quickly ending gold rush had a bad effect on Yekaterinburg and its inhabitants. In developed countries, capital inflows enriched cities. With this money schools, roads, hospitals, churches were built, trade developed. However, in Yekaterinburg, after leaving most of the working people and businessmen from the city due to the closure of the gold mines, only huts and dilapidated houses remained.
Modern gold mining
Until the twenties of the XX century, some Berezovsky gold mines were still operating, but later all data on precious metal mining were classified. During the seizure of valuables from the people and churches, the chemical laboratory was used to melt the gold salaries of icons and other ritual objects.
If in tsarist Russia regular supplies of gold to the imperial mint by Berezovsky and other gold mines were carried out, then with the advent of Soviet power, the supply of precious metal practically ceased. They resumed after the end of World War II. The first complex of new mines was opened in 1951. It included:
- Mine "South", whose trunk went underground at 416 meters.
- "Auxiliary" was deepened by 364 m.
- Two ventilation shafts.
Today, the equipment of the enterprise LLC Berezovsky Mine raises to the surface up to 150 thousand tons of ore per year, which gives the country up to 50 tons of gold. It was supplemented by the Severnaya mine, discovered in 1980, consisting of two working and two ventilation shafts. This deposit is quite young, but during its development the country has already received 9 tons of gold.
