The picturesque village of Shiryaevo, Samara region! Shiryaevo village and Mount Monastyrskaya, Samara region

general information:

The first mention of Shiryaevo in historical documents refers to the years 1643-1645. In 1647 the village belonged to the landowner Filatov, and was known under the name of the village Shiryaev Buerak. At that time, "67 peasants, beavers and grubbers with their families lived in it, and some of them had workers and people walking in the yard" (census settlements Samara district, 1b47). In the 18th century, these places came under the rule of the Orlov Counts. The name of the village changed several times: the village of Shiryaeva, Shiryaevka, the village of Shiryaevskoe. After a wooden church was built here in 1894, the village officially became known as Bogoyavlensky. The church did not last long and was dismantled for building materials before 1940.

In 1870, three young artists - Ilya Repin, Fyodor Vasilyev and Evgeny Makarov - and Repin's brother, musician Vasily, spent several months in Shiryaevo, about which Repin wrote in his book Far Close. In Shiryaevo, Repin made sketches for the painting "Barge haulers on the Volga" (now located in Shiryaevo).

The village of Shiryaevo is famous for its adits. However, contrary to popular belief, the development of building stone on the slopes of the Volga mountains did not begin during the years of Soviet industrialization, but at least a century and a half earlier.

Geologist M.P. Bortnikov. As he managed to find out, at the beginning of the 19th century, the owner of the majority of peasant souls in the village of Shiryaevo, Prince A.D. Volkonsky made mining and burning lime the main duty of his serfs. In order to take the necessary raw materials for such a trade, the peasants united in artels, and, having chosen a suitable site on the slope of the surrounding mountains, they opened the surface layers and mined limestone. Such craft flourished here for several decades, including after the abolition of serfdom. As a result, at the end of the 19th century, on the segment of the Zhiguli Mountains between Lipovaya and Krestovaya Polyany, many small quarries-quarries appeared, which almost without interruption in a narrow ribbon stretched forty meters above the river level.

In the 90s of the 19th century, the Saratov merchant Georgy Sergeevich Vanyushin began a large-scale industrial development of the Zhiguli carbonate rocks in the village of Shiryaevo. First, he laid a large quarry on Popova Gora, next to which in 1897 he opened the first lime plant "Shiryaevets". The business turned out to be so profitable that a few years later Vanyushin laid his second quarry to the west of Shiryaevo, near which he built the Bogatyr plant. The village that arose around this production was then named Vanyushino. The third quarry near the village of Shiryaevo, owned by the industrialist Ushkov, appeared higher up the valley of the Shiryaevsky ravine. The lime plant, erected near this quarry, was called "Epiphany Dacha".

As for those same square “windows” in the mountain above the village of Shiryaevo, which are still clearly visible from the Volga, M.P. Bortnikov attributes their appearance to the late 20s - early 30s of the twentieth century.

The main developer of these adits was the North Chemical Trust (SHT), whose activities, according to M.P. Bortnikov, was classified at that time.

SHT was mining limestone in adits in the immediate vicinity of the village of Shiryaevo. The main object was the layer "Chemical", or "Upper Arzhanets", where the best, purest and free from impurities fuzuli limestones were deposited, which were processed into building lime for finishing work, cement and glass production. The Bogoyavlenskaya Dacha quarry at that time was still being developed by an open method, but then, due to significant waste rock dumps, the development of the seam also began in adits. Their height was determined by the thickness of the productive formation (5-7 meters). The tunneling was carried out by drilling and blasting, the rock was hauled along a narrow gauge railway, at first - with horse-drawn, and later - with diesel traction.

Following the Bogoyavlensky quarry, open-pit limestone mining was also stopped on Popova Gora, where adits were also laid. Thus, by the mid-30s of the twentieth century, of all the places where carbonate rocks were mined in Zhiguli, open-pit mining was used only at the Bogatyr quarry.

natural objects.

On the right bank of the Volga at the mouth of the Shiryaevsky ravine of the same name, on the territory national park Samarskaya Luka, the old village of Shiryaevo is located. This is where our path lies today. There are three ways to get here: by car through Zhigulevsk, by bike from the village of Rozhdestveno, or any other pier on the right bank of the Volga, this is where the pedals have enough strength to pedal from, or by water bus from Samara.

In the absence of the first two means of transportation, I use the third. Two and a half hours of contemplation of the Volga landscapes, and we are there.

A lot of tourists always come here, and in last years and sightseers. Coming off the gangway of the pier, you will always meet several sightseeing buses waiting for the group on the shore to bring them to the nearest sights. But we will not deprive ourselves of the pleasure of walking. And the place that I want to show you today is very close, and we actually have already arrived. There are many interesting things in these places, I will try to tell a little about them, climbing the mountain. We buy vouchers to visit the national park, recently being on the territory is paid, the cost is not large, rather symbolic and we head further through the village. First, along the central road, and then, turning onto one of the streets, we reach the mountain. What kind of views are here, it’s hard for me as a city person to pass by this rural color.

Modest simple courtyards are exactly what I like, these wooden huts touch something, I want to stay for a couple of weeks, live in such a house. While away the evenings, on the mound for conversations and looking at the starry sky, diluting the sweet flowing smell of lilacs with a tart smoke of tobacco from a pipe.

I dreamed a little)

Right behind this courtyard, the ascent uphill begins. The mountain is not high and the climb is quite simple, a path leads to the top along a rocky grassy slope.

According to local legend, this mountain got its name from the mountain that existed in its vicinity. monastery which is not documented. However, there is a legend that says that on the patronal holidays barge haulers often heard from the depths of the Monastyrskaya Mountain a solemn morning and evening ringing. Feet of bare feet felt barely perceptible shudders. From the depths of the mountain came a long, ringing sound. In a moment, the sound was repeated, as if in reflection, the sound from the bell tower and the sounds from the mountain were repeated, and turned into a chime. The chime was completed by three strong bell strikes, which were heard almost simultaneously with the bell strikes in the belfry of the Shiryaev church. According to the version without hoaxes, the name of the mountain is associated with its location. Once these lands belonged to the Zvenigorod Savva-Storozhevsky monastery, by 1903 this monastery in the village of Shiryaevsky gully had 23 acres of arable land and 127 acres of forest. However, the entire northwestern part of the Samara Bend was at the disposal of the monastery elders.

At an altitude of about 30 meters from the foot of the mountain, on the eastern slope, the remnants of weathered limestone rocks are scattered. Some of them reach a height of up to several meters. They have a bizarre shape, they are sometimes called the Shiryaev sphinxes.

From here, stunning views of the Volga expanses and the village of Shiryaevo open up.

The first mention of the village in historical documents dates back to the 40s of the 17th century, but human settlements in this place have been known since the 10th century. The year of foundation of the village is considered to be 1643, when this plot of land was granted to the Samara landowner Mikhail Fillitov. Then this settlement was known under the name of the village Shiryaev Buerak. Apparently the name is associated with the size of the "gully" - that is, the ravine, its expanse - breadth, although the toponym may also be associated with the nicknamed personal name Shiryai, Shiryaev. Catherine II, while traveling along the Volga from Tver to Simbirsk, presented these lands to her favorite, Count Orlov, and since 1768 they became part of the Orlov-Dovydov estate. The name of the village changed several times: the village of Shiryaeva, Shiryaevka, the village of Shiryaevskoe. With construction wooden church in 1894, the village officially became known as Bogoyavlensky. The church did not last long, was closed in 1930 and dismantled for building materials. On the site of the church there is now a monument to those who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.

From here, the houses below look like toys.

The wind blows and the slope is enlivened by the waves. The swaying of grasses, the free wind, the sun and the blue sky with curly clouds overhead, the opening expanses of the Volga expanse. Here it is the feeling of freedom, freedom for the sake of which peasants from central Rus' once fled here, free people, Cossacks who formed the Volga freemen in the Zhiguli mountains.

A little higher, the relief of the slope forms a rather spacious natural viewing platform. On June 30, 1999, in honor of the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ, in memory of all those who laid down their lives for Great Rus', they installed the Cross of Memory and Repentance.

It's not the top yet, it's only half way to it.

The top is covered with forest, and the closer we get to it, the more often we meet trees on the way, beautiful branched sorcerer oaks with bizarrely curved trunks.

A little more and we are already at the top. We stop to take a breath and look around, and the view from here opens up standing. Directly opposite, Popova Gora rises, the object is very interesting and this is the topic of a separate post.

Among the slopes of the mountains goes deep into the valley of the Shiryaevsky ravine the road to another interesting place- Stone bowl. The tract is a rounded bowl-shaped extension, formed by the confluence of three ravines, surrounded on all sides by mountains, it looks like a huge stone funnel. This is one of the picturesque places of the Shiryaevskaya Valley, located 12 kilometers from the village of Shiryaevo. The stone bowl is mentioned in numerous legends of the Zhiguli Mountains. So one of them tells about the associate of Stepan Razin Fyodor Sheludyak, who, not wanting to surrender to the tsarist troops, rushed from the cliff to the stones. But the stones parted, and Fedor got to the Mistress of the Mountains. He lived in a dungeon for a long time, but his stone captivity did not please him, and he died in anguish. Since then, the Mistress of the Zhiguli has been crying, and her tears are flowing into the Stone bowl.

According to another legend, there was a Church in the village in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. A priest served in the temple and he had an assistant - a sexton boy. They served well. But the Tatar horde swooped in, swept everything out of the way, destroyed temples, killed people. The priest took the most precious thing from the temple, went to the mountains with a novice and hid the liturgical vessels in a cave, and when they returned to the village, the Tatars grabbed them and let's torture them. The father died without revealing the secret. The boy became afraid, his unintelligent heart trembled, and he led the villains to the cherished place. The leader of the Khan grabbed the Chalice with his hands, not clean. But it was not there. The Cup was released from the hands of the adversary, but rose high into the sky. And at this place, a miraculous source scored.
There are three sources in the Stone Bowl, but only one of them is considered holy and bears the name of Nicholas the Wonderworker. Local residents say that the elder himself sometimes appears in the vicinity of the village: he helps stray mushroom pickers, saves from wild animals.

Visiting the source is my old dream, unfortunately not yet realized, but I hope it's still ahead. But back to the story about the object of our attention. Actually Monastic is called only western slope mountains, and eastern part between Shiryaevsky and Goat ravines is called Mount Camel. Small ravines, going towards the river in parallel rows, divide the mountain into separate ridges, resembling the humps of this animal. Here, on the eastern side, on a green forested slope, a narrow white stripe is clearly visible, this is the Vanyushinsky quarry. It is named after an entrepreneur who at the beginning of the last century owned limestone processing plants in Shiryaevo. Here are the famous adits of Camel Mountain.

The height of the ceilings in the adits is about 4-5 meters, supported by massive columns, they go deep into the mountains. It is always cold here, even on the hottest summer day, the chilling air coming out of them can be felt for 10 meters approaching the entrance. Silence reigns here, broken only by the rustling of stones under the holes. Arriving here, sometimes even eerie sensations can arise, caused not by darkness and the cyclopean dimensions of the drifts, but precisely by this absolute silence, but fear does not arise, it is overcome by curiosity and interest in these man-made labyrinths.
Until the middle of the 20th century, there was a Goat Horns rock with unusual peaks that were pulled up and resembling horns. Two explosions in 1952 completely destroyed the wonderful peaks that had attracted tourists, writers and artists. "Camel Mountain" - this toponym appeared later, after the disappearance of the Goat Horns.

Now, in the protruding part of the rock, when you turn on the imagination, of course, you can see the profile of the camel's head, its top has the popular name "Balda" and is an excellent observation deck.

The most beautiful places that attract people, artists and writers for inspiration, tourists interesting routes. Here the stone is fraught with history, the water carries strength, and the sky is reflected even in the thorns, coloring them with a deep blue.

It was unexpected to meet such a bright clearing all dotted with these blue mordovnik inflorescences.

It is beautiful here, it is not for nothing that the painter Ilya Efimovich Repin liked these places so much, the camera does not convey all the beauty and landscape inherent in these places.

We go down and the closer to the foot, the higher the grass becomes. And now, making our way through thickets of waist-high grass, we go out onto the road.

There is still a little time before the arrival of Omik, which means we still have time to climb the neighboring Popov Mountain.

Popova Gora is famous for its adits. Building stone and limestone were mined here for the production of lime. In 1897, at the foot of Popova Gora, the first plant appeared - "Shiryaevets", owned by the merchant Makarov from Uralsk and his son-in-law Nazarov from Samara. Soon this plant was acquired by a well-known entrepreneur, Saratov merchant G.S. Vanyushin. Subsequently, he had another plant a little higher up the river, which then became known as "Bogatyr". Shiryaevo became the center of the Zhiguli mining industry for the extraction of rubble, high-quality limestone, the production of lime and alabaster. Over the years of mining in the vicinity of the village, an extensive multi-kilometer network of underground adits has been created. Work in them was stopped in the mid-1950s, then they switched to the open development method.

Here I will end our tour, I hope you enjoyed it.

The first mention of the village of Shiryaevo in historical documents dates back to 1643-1645. A description of the surroundings of the village in Zhiguli can be found in the notes of the Dutch painter and traveler Cornelius de Bruin, who saw these places in May 1703. In various sources, the village of Shiryaevo was also called Shiryaev Buerak, the village of Shiryaeva, Shiryaevka, the village of Shiryaevskoye, the village of Bogoyavlenskoye. I present to you a selection historical photos village and surroundings. Part of the photo was kindly provided by the Samarskaya Luka National Park, part of it was from Oleg Pavlukhin's blog.

A little history of the village of Shiryaevo:

Since 1643, the Samara nobleman Mikhail Filitov had his possessions in Shiryaevsky Buerak, given to him for his service. In the census book of the Samara district in 1646, in the village of Shiryaev Buerak, there were 25 households, 82 males lived in them. According to the first revision of 1719, there were 80 male souls in the village, belonging to the landowners Filitov, Karakozov, Antonov and some others. According to the third revision of 1763, the owners of the serfs in the village were: M. B. Skolkova, A. P. Filitov, N. A. Antonova, S. E. Natoporkin, A. P. Shipilova. In 1767, the favorite of Catherine II - Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov and his brother, Vladimir Grigoryevich (the youngest of the five Orlov brothers), were among those accompanying the Empress during her journey along the Volga from Tver to Simbirsk. The Empress gave Shiryaevo to her favorite and from 1768 these lands became part of the estate of Count Orlov - Davydov.

In 1870, three young artists - Ilya Repin, Fyodor Vasiliev and Evgeny Makarov - and Repin's brother, musician Vasily, spent several months in Shiryaevo, about which Repin wrote in his book Far Close. Directly in Shiryaevo, Repin made sketches for the painting “Barge haulers on the Volga” (now the house-museum of I. Repin is located in Shiryaevo).

In Shiryaevo for many years there was a development of adits for the purpose of extracting limestone and building stone. In 1900, the merchant Vanyushin built a plant for processing limestone and producing quicklime, alabaster and gypsum in the village. Later, an open pit appeared in the vicinity (now the Zhiguli Lime Plant).

Beginning in 1929, families of repressed kulaks were exiled to the "special settlement" in the village of Shiryaevo. By stories local residents, the exiles lived in barracks, some of them worked in adits and at the lime factories "Shiryaevets", "Bogatyr" and "Burlak". In the 1930s-1950s, the repressed also worked on the collective farm named after. Krupskaya.

Plant "Bogatyr", furnace "Pitcher", 1932.

Plant "Burlak" in the village. Bogatyr, 1932

photos selected by Vadim Kondratiev

Among the countless sights of the Samarskaya Luka, a special variety and uniqueness natural landscapes valley stands out Shiryaevsky gully. Its winding ribbon 35 kilometers long stretched across the body of the Samarskaya Luka. Being the largest ravine on its territory, it is literally stuffed with the most picturesque and unique corners that never cease to amaze with their splendor any person who has come here. Having visited at least once in these places, it is impossible to get rid of the temptation to return here again.

On the way to its mouth, the Shiryaevskaya Valley either expands to a significant size, or sharply narrows, becoming sandwiched among its slopes, sometimes making sharp turns.

In the valley of the Shiryaevsky ravine, everything that the nature of these lands is rich in is collected - springs, rocks, stony steppes, different types of forests, including birch and pine. As in a chain, more than fifteen natural monuments follow each other.

The largest spring of the Samarskaya Luka is the Stone Bowl. In this place of constant pilgrimage for tourists and lovers natural water erected a chapel.

On the banks of the Volga River and deep into the widened mouth of the Shiryaevsky ravine lies the village of Shiryaevo. The surroundings of the village are no less interesting than the Shiryaevsky gully itself.

On both sides of the ravine, two peaks descend to the Volga: on the left (if you face the Volga) - Popova Gora, on the right - Monastyrskaya. The memory of the existence of a monastery south of the village of Shiryaevo has been preserved, the toponymy of the place keeps the memory of it: Mount Monastyrskaya once belonged to this monastery. The slopes of both mountains are cut by ravines and hollows, overgrown with forests, from their peaks a huge horizon opens up in all directions and most of the visible space is occupied by a wide valley of the "intermountain" with the village. The surface of the bottom of the valley between the peaks is completely flat and only slightly inclined towards the Volga.

This plane, as it were, props up the slopes of the mountains, which indicates their earlier formation. The thickness of the valleys consists of an alternation of marine and continental rocks and has a thickness of up to 200 meters. Under it is hidden the lower part of the slopes of the Zhiguli Mountains and the bottom of the ravine. About half of the mountains remained on the surface. But even this upper part of them looks majestic and makes a strong impression.

The first mention of the village in historical documents refers to the years 1643-1645. As can be seen from the census of the settlements of the Samara district in 1647, the village of Shiryaevo belonged to the landowner Filatov and was known under the name of the village of Shiryaev Buerak. Then "67 peasants, beavers and hoarders with their families" lived in it, and some of them had workers and people walking in the yard. In the 18th century, the area fell under the rule of the Orlov Counts. The name of the village changed several times: the village of Shiryaeva, Shiryaevka, the village of Shiryaevskoe. With the construction of a wooden church in 1894, the village officially became known as Epiphany. The church did not last long and was dismantled for building materials before 1940.

In 1923, near Shiryaev, on the left side of the ravine in the tract of Popova Gora, an expedition of the Society for History, Archeology, Ethnography and Natural Science led by V.V. Holmsten found traces of a settlement of the early Iron Age (shards with ornaments), which belonged to the settlements of the Ananyino culture of the Belogorsk type (VIII - VII centuries BC). Such archaeological sites are numerous in Samarskaya Luka: settlements of Bald Mountain in Morkvashi, on Zadelnaya, White mountains.

The name of the village is due to its location in the Shiryaevsky gully and is derived from this toponym. The very name of the ravine, apparently, is associated with its size. The width of the mouth, where the village is located, in some places reaches a significant value. Russian dialect shiryai - "space, expanse" (V.I. Dal). However, the presence of the possessive suffix -ev in the definition gives reason to associate the toponym with the nicknamed personal name Shiryai, Shiryaev.

The village of Shiryaevo with its environs and Volga life provided rich material for the work of the great Russian artist Ilya Efimovich Repin. He drew images for the painting "Barge haulers on the Volga" from the life of ship workers-barge haulers and stock pit workers who daily passed along the shore. Their mournful songs resounded the expanses of the Volga banks 200-300 years ago.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the number of barge haulers reached 300 thousand, but with the development of shipping in the second half of this century, this number decreases to 150 thousand. When asked how many there were on the Volga, one of the old barge haulers answered: “In addition to steamboats and horse-drawn boats with their barges and podchalkas, up to four thousand vessels on straps and sails sailed along the Volga. For a large vessel, at least a hundred workers were required, for a medium one - thirty or forty, and for a small one - from five to eight people. So guess now how many of our brothers were on the Volga. " Another of them agrees with this argument and confirms: "There were a lot of us on the Volga at that time, the entire bank was strewn with old bast shoes. Whatever you meet there: Russians, and Mordovians, and Tatars!"

Barge haulers pulled day and night Volga ships on their shoulders, filling the air with sad songs, more like the cries and groans of tortured people. ON THE. Nekrasov wrote:

Come out to the Volga: whose groan is heard

Over the great Russian river?

That barge haulers go tow.

The work of barge haulers was hard. In a constantly bent position, they strongly leaned on the strap. This led to the development of tuberculosis. Often barge haulers lost their sight, because in any weather their eyes were not protected by the wind. From the rush of blood to the bowed head, the faces became red and swollen. Stone and rubble hurt his legs. Walking on the soft, crumbling sand stretched his tendons. Constantly wet feet suffered from rheumatism.

Repin captured the forced labor of the Volga barge haulers in his famous work. In 1870, he went on his first creative trip along the Volga together with his brother Vasily, an artist of the Russian opera orchestra, and friends, the landscape painter Fyodor Vasilyev and the traveler, a graduate of the Academy of Arts, E.K. Makarov. In that year, Repin made a journey that left a deep mark on his work. It began in the upper reaches of the Volga, in Tver, and continued to Saratov. In Shiryaevo, the house where Repin and his friends lived is still preserved.

They stopped their choice on Samarskaya Luka. “Here we lived all summer,” says Repin in his notes. “We bought a boat with a sail and often made excursions for sketches of 10-15 miles up and down the Volga. Local population treated us distrustfully. They could not understand our occupation, which they had never seen before. My very first drawing (in the album) of a group of children on the shore ended in a scandal. The children were pleased to receive a nickel for their seat, but the mothers who ran away were horrified: they beat the children and forced them to throw their money away. The peasants agreed to cry and strictly demanded an explanation - who we are. We were already accompanied to our hut by a whole crowd with ominous faces and insistent demands for passports. We took out the passports, but it turned out that there was no one to read them, the crowd was illiterate ... "

Ilya Efimovich worked on "Barge haulers" until 1873. The then unfinished painting went to several exhibitions, and after its appearance at the academic exhibition, heated debates arose in literature and in the art world. The progressive part of the press, the progressive Russian intelligentsia enthusiastically greeted the picture. The Society for the Encouragement of Artists awarded her an award. Academy of Arts - medal. The conservative part of the artists considered the painting "the greatest profanation of art" for its plot, for the bold innovation of the artist.

In a letter to P.V. Alabin dated January 26, 1895, Repin tells how the picture was created: “We got up at sunrise and hurried to the deck so as not to miss a single place, and tried to sketch, write down and notice in our road albums all the outstanding on a long way, so that, after driving to Saratov, we climb up and stop at the most interesting place for us.

The Volga seemed to me like some kind of musical piece, like Glinka's Kamarinskaya. It began with mournful motifs of endlessly stretching lines to Uglich and Yaroslavl, turned into beautiful melodies in Plyosy, Cheboksary to Kazan; it was agitated, crushed, went off into the endless distances near Simbirsk, and, finally, in the Zhiguli it burst into such a mighty trepak, such a dismantling Kamarinskaya, that we ourselves involuntarily danced with our eyes, hands, pencils and were ready to start squatting. As in a round dance, one danced, another, more and more - now the whole round dance is already dancing, making the most burning knees ...

We have marked three places: Stavropol, Morkvashi and Shiryaev Buerak, opposite Tsarev Kurgan.

Enlightened people came across among the barge haulers: Kanin (a shorn priest), Konstantin, a former icon painter, Ilko the sailor, who served on the eastern ocean - in the navy. They were amazed by my sketches. I marvel! And here is a man, and there is a man."

In his book "Far Close" I.E. Repin describes his journey along the Volga, meetings with barge haulers, and the beginning of work on the painting. In the seventh chapter of his memoirs, called “Shiryaevo”, he writes: “... The next day, after tea, we immediately dispersed in different directions. Horns along the upper path, and I took the album and went to opposite side- to the Volozhka, as the nearest are called

The village of Shiryaevo is the birthplace of the poet Alexander Vasilievich Abramov-Shiryaevets.

He was born into a peasant family in 1887. His father, a forest ranger, played the harmonica, and his mother sang well. Alexander spent the first ten years of his life in Shiryaev, where he graduated from a parochial school. In 1897, after the death of his father, he moved with his mother to Stavropol. He spent two years in the Samara city school. Poverty made it impossible to continue education. He served as a laborer, a scribe. Subsequently, he worked as an official of the postal department in Central Asia. In 1915, he visited his native village, experienced, in his words, the "violent joy" of a meeting with the Volga, the Zhiguli. Visited Shiryaevo and Samara in last time in 1922, and died suddenly two years later.

He began writing poetry at the age of seven. As a child, Alexander ran to the Volga and listened to the songs of barge haulers and hookers, Shiryaev workers - finders of rubble stone and lime. Childhood spent on the Volga among the Zhiguli, with their rich historical legends, early acquaintance with the work of porters and barge haulers who worked for the merchant Vanyushin, left a mark on all the poet's work. Numerous legends and legends about the times of Razin, about the treasures buried in the Zhiguli mountains, especially captivated the poet's imagination. Brought up on poetic songs about the wonders of the Volga nature, Shiryaevets did not forget the Volga, his native village, until the end of his days. Zhiguli. Living in Turkestan, he yearned for his native places and experienced the "violent joy" of meeting with his native Volga region, sang these places, made them poetic:

Is there anything more wonderful

Zhiguli ridges!

What songs

With baroques and rafts!

Like in a fairy tale, rocks, mountains

On the tops - a dark forest

Thinking and looking

Into the abyss of blue skies.

The waves are crashing, the waves are crashing

On the slopes of the coast,

Are crumbling into the sun

Millions of pearls...

His poems were appreciated by Sergei Yesenin, who spoke of Shiryaevets with respect, and after a personal acquaintance he became very friends with him. "Guslyar Volga", "accordion Zhiguli" called him. The poem "We are now leaving a little:" Yesenin dedicated to a poet friend. It was first published in 1924 in the Krasnaya Nov magazine under the heading "In Memory of Shiryaevets". The poet's house in the village of Shiryaevo was preserved and was acquired by the Kuibyshevsky art museum. It housed ethnographical museum: items of peasant life and folk art XIX and XX centuries.

Shiryaevo is also famous for the adits, punched at the beginning of the 20th century, for the extraction of stone. The squares of their entrances are visible along the perimeter of Popova Gora. Horizontal drifts go deep into the mountains for many tens of meters. All Shiryaevo adits consist of six unequal in size and non-communicating systems. The total number of entries is about 35. The most big system is located closest to the Volga, at an altitude of about 40 meters above the river. The height of the ceilings is 3-5 meters; The main fastening of the ceilings was carried out at the expense of pillars - huge columns of rock. These supports are more often arranged in regular rows, but sometimes they also acquire a chaotic arrangement. Majestic silence reigns in the adits, sometimes broken by a melodic chime from the falling of water drops from the ceiling, and the sounds made by a flying bat. In the summer heat here - eternal and unchanging coolness.

In the floor you can see traces of narrow-gauge sleepers, even pieces of rails come across that miraculously survived and were not stolen by the local population.

On the walls - insulators from the wiring. Stones of various sizes underfoot, sometimes whole mountains of harvested limestone. Some of these heaps of boulders appeared much later as a result of landslides, so walking through the dungeons is not safe. The walls and columns are gradually destroyed from time to time. There are many landslide-prone places in the adits. Especially often collapses occur at the end of winter and the beginning of spring, when icing occurs intensively along the cracks in the walls and ceilings of adits. Ice expands cracks between unstable rock layers and this leads to collapses. During this period, in the coldest parts of the galleries, whole fantastic "cities" grow out of ice stalagmites, which sometimes "survive" until the middle of summer.

As a result of the action of tectonic forces, the Zhiguli Mountains were formed. Due to the uplift, Upper Carboniferous deposits were exposed on the surface, to which all the largest modern deposits of building stone in the Samara region are confined.

The active use of limestone and dolomite for construction needs in the region began at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 17th centuries during intensive construction in Samara stone structures. The extraction of limestone for the production of building stone, and then for the production of lime, has long been carried out in Zhiguli at small handicraft quarries.

So, on one of them, at the foot of Popovaya Mountain in the village of Shiryaevo, in 1897, the first plant appeared - "Shiryaevets", owned by the merchant Makarov from Uralsk and his son-in-law Nazarov from Samara. On July 1, 1900, this plant was acquired by a well-known entrepreneur, Saratov merchant G.S. Vanyushin. The enterprising Vanyushin tried to launch a comprehensive development of the wealth hidden in the depths of the Zhiguli. Documents indicate that he sought to master the production of cement, slate and other exceptionally valuable building materials.

To this end, he made connections with various foreign firms and companies. Thus, in 1900, he entered into negotiations with the Arthur Koppel joint-stock company in Moscow, which produced, on his order, a number of projects and cost estimates for the construction of a Portland cement plant with an annual capacity of 60,000 barrels.

Thus, the village of Shiryaevo became the center of the Zhiguli mining industry for the extraction of rubble, high-quality limestone, dolomite, lime and alabaster. Before the revolution of 1917, there were about 200 households in the village. Most of population was employed mining in quarries and at the factories of Vanyushin and Ushkov: cutters, quarries, loaders. Only a small part of the Shiryaevites was engaged in agriculture. It is here in the background, because the land, crossed by ravines and mountains, is inconvenient for farming. A small percentage of the population was engaged in beekeeping and fishing.

All factories worked on raw materials mined in a closed way. In 1955 they switched to open. Limestone mining on Popova Gora continued until 1961. During this time, several tens of kilometers of underground workings were covered. The adits extend deep into the mountains up to 500 meters, and along the Volga (in total) - up to 6 kilometers. Now these cavities are visited by curious tourists,

From waste rock dumps, a terrace up to 50 meters wide and up to 50 meters high was backfilled over several kilometers of the Volga coast. Now it is expanded in places, leveled, laid along its lower part highway from the village of Bogatyr to Shiryaev. Many ravines along the Volga and the western side of the mouth part of the Shiryaevskaya Valley are buried under dumps and waste heaps of unused rock. For a long time, production waste from the operating Bogatyr quarry was brought here.

Soft varieties of limestone can be easily processed with a hand jackhammer, cut with an "ax" and sawed with a longitudinal saw into slabs of different sizes for floors. These grades are used to make a plinth, steps, window sills in a polished form - for interior decoration buildings. More dense grades of limestone were used in the development of monuments, steps, columns. Hewn stones from Shiryaev went to the abutments of bridges and many other road structures. Most of the pavements in Samara and other cities of the region were made from the same limestones. During the years of five-year plans, many buildings were built in Kuibyshev (Samara), the building material for the foundation of which was limestone from Popova Gora.

In early spring, on the Volga, near the Shiryaev factories, barges and planks (large flat-bottomed vessels up to 20 meters long) lined up, on which the extracted raw materials were loaded and sent to different points throughout the summer. During the spring flood of the Volga, water went far along a small channel - erik to the village itself, facilitating the loading of products onto barges. During this period, loading operations were carried out at an accelerated pace in order to maximize the use of high water. Currently, the erik is blocked by three dams and turned into several ponds, where the water is held by a large mirror even in dry summers and is used for the needs of the village.

Nowadays, unfortunately, almost nothing remains of the Shiryayevets plant. Small ruins of the walls on the banks of the Volga, several old barracks not yet dismantled into stone, at the foot of Popova Gora, and an incomplete foundation of a factory chimney blown up (in the mid-90s) have been preserved. The pipe was destroyed due to a state of disrepair, although it could have been saved as historical monument mining industry in our region.

Instead of bizarre rocks scattered among the forests mountain slopes, the Volga banks "decorate" quarrying and scree dumps. In this case, not only beauty is sacrificed. Quarries destroy the axial zone of dislocation, and we lose the opportunity to study the unique geological structure of the mountains on the platform. There is no other such site on the Russian Plain, and on other platforms of our planet.

Today there is silence on Popova Gora. The slopes heal their wounds as best they can, overgrown with thyme, St. John's wort, oregano, young birches and aspens. There is little hope for man here. Initially, there were attempts to recreate appearance Popova Gora, for which overburden rocks from the Bogatyr quarry were brought here. But the good undertaking was soon stopped.

The fauna of the abandoned adits of Popova Gora is not rich and has not yet been fully explored. The cavities left by man now serve as a refuge for a variety of vertebrates and invertebrates. Most of them appear in the caves in autumn and disappear in the spring, since the high humidity characteristic of the dungeons and the even, moderately low temperature (in the depths of the dungeons it is 3-8 ° C all year round and only the parts closest to the entrances cool down) are very favorable for hibernation many animals. In summer, cold and dark caves hardly suitable for life.

Of the vertebrates, bats are the most characteristic inhabitants of artificial caves. There are 10 species of them in the Samara region, and all of them are currently rare. Shiryaevo adits are largest place wintering. There are 5 of them in the Samara region: brown earflaps, northern leather bats, mustachioed bats, water bats and pond bats. In the summer they do not live here and appear here occasionally, but in late September - early October they begin mass settlement and the formation of a winter colony. The animals continue to fly out for feeding and night walks, and by mid-December, the settlement ends, wintering begins.

The winter sleep of bats differs markedly from the deep and continuous hibernation of such wintering animals as the ground squirrel, marmot, dormouse, and hedgehog. Its peculiarity lies in the ease of transition of the animal from a state of stupor to activity and vice versa. A light touch, noise or bright light is enough to wake the animal. He begins to breathe faster and move. When touched, he turns his head towards the irritant, opens his mouth, as if yawning, and makes a slow, creaky-hissing sound, trying to scare off the offender. If the animal warms up enough, it flies away.

The winter sleep of bats is regularly interrupted by brief periods of wakefulness. Even in the middle of winter, you can often see animals flying through the cave. Moreover, at this time they can mate. Cases of awakening are especially frequent at the end of winter. Since the beginning of April, there have been almost continuous flights to the entrances to the adits.

In addition to bats, in the Shiryaevo adits one can see rock pigeons nesting in niches (in their natural, in contrast to the urban, habitat). They stay here in the winter as well. Other vertebrates rather accidentally become inhabitants of adits. Common shrews, bank voles, yellow-throated mice, and much less often gray rats can be found in caves. What attracts them here and how closely their life is connected with the adits is unknown.

Here, not far from the adits, if you're lucky, you can meet another rarity. This is the largest diurnal butterfly in our region - Apollo. Her beauty and size became the reason for her ruthless extermination. Apollo is widely distributed - from Western Europe to Altai, but is rare everywhere and occurs locally, in limited areas of its range. Lives settled.

Around the adits, on the slopes of Popova Gora, facing the village, the landscape of a rocky steppe stands out sharply, accompanied by rare pine plantations. Over millions of years of existence in rocky conditions, the pine has acquired its distinctive features: low, with sparsely located branches, often with a curved trunk, it differs from straight-stemmed pines growing on the sands of the Volga region. In the steppe areas, the experienced eye of a botanist will immediately find relic and endemic plants. Forest and steppe touch so closely that a few steps away from the feather grass, lily of the valley blooms in the shade.

Video about Samarskaya Luka

On Sunday, Samaraintur was invited to go with them on a "weekend tour" to the village of Shiryaevo. I really love these places, and infrequently I have to travel around the region with organized tour and therefore gladly accepted the invitation. Next, I will try to convey with photographs what everyone can see with their own eyes in one day, going to Shiryaevo on a ticket from a tour operator.

1. Crossing from the glade to them. Frunze to Shiryaevo on Voskhod takes only 30 minutes. At 10:30 we were already in Shiryaevo.

2. At the pier we were met by a bus, the first point of the route was the historical and museum complex.

3. I have already detailed about it, I will not repeat myself, I will post only a few photos of the current state of the museum.

4. Monument to Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930).

7. New decorations on the territory museum complex. Installed by some sponsor from Zhigulevsk.

8, The territory is well-groomed, many flowers.

9. House of merchant Vdovin.

10. An exhibition of paintings by the Samara merchant, philanthropist and artist Konstantin Golovkin (1871-1925) is currently taking place in this house. Work worthwhile, I recommend to visit.

Golovkin K.P.« Windmill» (1898)

11. Sculpture "Repin with barge haulers".

12. Life-size copy of the painting "Barge Haulers on the Volga".

15. observation platform decorated with interesting benches.

16. Not so long ago, a monument to miners was erected.

17. Viewed from the Volga, the monument-talisman of the Volga Bulgaria Ak Bars.

18. panoramic view to Shiryaevo, Volga and Monastyrskaya Hill. The construction of a new bat museum can be seen in the foreground.

20. The weather that day was very hot, then it cooled down a little at the entrance to the adits.