Zashiversk

Zashiversk was a town north of the arctic circle in what is now the Sakha Republic (formerly Yakutia), Russia. It was located on the right bank of the Indigirka River where the river makes a sharp bend around the town-site. It was founded in 1639. It served as a fortress town and then as an administrative center. In 1803 administrative functions were removed to Verkhoyansk. Subsequently the town suffered repeated epidemics of smallpox. It was completely depopulated by 1898 (one source says by 1863).Spaso-Zashiverskaya church (built 1700) was moved to Novosibirsk by Alexey Okladnikov, and now it exhibited at the Museum of the Archeological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science.Early colonyFrom the end of the Time of Troubles small groups of Russians penetrated and colonized the Far Eastern Arctic, in two distinct waves originating from White Sea area and from the Ural Mountains. In 1639 the company of Postnik Ivanov, a Siberian cossack, reached the site of Zashiversk and stayed there for the winter. The site, located below the rapids (Shivery, шиверы, in Siberian dialect, thus the name Zashiversk) of the Indigirka River, some 870 kilometers from its inlet, marked the crossroads of a river route to Kolyma and Chukotka and a land route (Tsar's Trail, царская дорога) from Yakutsk to Nizhnekolymsk. Postnik reported abundance of valuable sable and fish, significant population of native settlers and nomads as well as silver possessed by the Yukagirs; the voyevoda of Yakutsk responded with establishment of a permanent colony to exploit the opportunity.