town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an o ...

administrative center An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune is located. In countries with French as administrative language (such as Belgium, Lu ...

Aldansky District Aldansky District (russian: Алда́нский улу́с; sah, Алдан улууһа, ''Aldan uluuha'', ) is an administrativeConstitution of the Sakha Republic, Article 45 and municipalLaw #172-Z #351-III district (raion, or ''ulus'' ...

Sakha Republic Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia),, is the largest republic of Russia, located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of roughly 1 million. Sakha comprises half of the area of its governing Far E ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

Aldan Highlands The Aldan Highlands, or Aldan Plateau ( rus, Алданское нагорье, r=Aldanskoye Nagorye; sah, Алдан үрдэлэ) are a mountainous area in the Sakha Republic, Far Eastern Federal District, Russia. Aldan town and Tommot are l ...

Aldan River The Aldan (russian: Алдан) is the second-longest, right tributary of the Lena in the Sakha Republic in eastern Siberia.basin, on the stream Orto-Sala near its mouth in the Seligdar River, about south of the republic's

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used fo ...

of

Yakutsk Yakutsk (russian: Якутск, p=jɪˈkutsk; sah, Дьокуускай, translit=Djokuuskay, ) is the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located about south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one ...

. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 21,275.

History

It was founded in 1923 as Nezametny (), after discovery of rich gold deposits. It was granted town status and renamed in 1939. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, an airfield was built here for the Alaska-Siberian (

ALSIB ALSIB (or the Northern Trace) was the Soviet Union portion of the Alaska- Siberian air road receiving Lend-Lease aircraft from the Northwest Staging Route. Aircraft manufactured in the United States were flown over this route for World War II c ...

) air route used to ferry American

Lend-Lease Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (), was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and other Allied nations with food, oil, ...

aircraft to the Eastern Front.Igor Lebedev. ''Aviation Lend-Lease to Russia''. Nova Publishers, 1997, pp. 44-49

Administrative and municipal status

Within the framework of administrative divisions, Aldan serves as the

administrative center An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune is located. In countries with French as administrative language (such as Belgium, Lu ...

of

Aldansky District Aldansky District (russian: Алда́нский улу́с; sah, Алдан улууһа, ''Aldan uluuha'', ) is an administrativeConstitution of the Sakha Republic, Article 45 and municipalLaw #172-Z #351-III district (raion, or ''ulus'' ...

.''Registry of the Administrative-Territorial Divisions of the Sakha Republic'' As an inhabited locality, Aldan is classified as a town under district jurisdiction. As an administrative division, it is, together with two rural localities, incorporated within Aldansky District as the

Town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an o ...

of Aldan. As a municipal division, the Town of Aldan is incorporated within Aldansky Municipal District as Aldan Urban Settlement.Law #173-Z #353-III

Economy

Aldan remains a productive

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...

and

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...

mining center, largely avoiding the large drop in population suffered by most other towns in the

Russian Far East The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admin ...

in the years after the

dissolution of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

.

Transportation

The town stands on the

A360 Lena Highway A360 Lena Highway or The Amur-Yakutsk Highway (russian: Амуро-Якутская автомобильная дорога or russian: Амуро-Якутская автомагистраль) is a federal highway in Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in R ...

, which connects

Yakutsk Yakutsk (russian: Якутск, p=jɪˈkutsk; sah, Дьокуускай, translit=Djokuuskay, ) is the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located about south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one ...

and Never, as well as on the partially complete

Amur–Yakutsk Mainline The Amur–Yakutsk Mainline (russian: Амуро-Якутская магистраль, ), abbreviated to AYaM (Russian language, Russian АЯM), is a partially complete railway in eastern Russia, linking the Trans–Siberian Railway and Baikal ...

railway. It is served by the Aldan Airport.

Climate

Aldan has the typical eastern Siberian

subarctic climate The subarctic climate (also called subpolar climate, or boreal climate) is a climate with long, cold (often very cold) winters, and short, warm to cool summers. It is found on large landmasses, often away from the moderating effects of an ocean, g ...

( Köppen ''Dfc'') though it is affected by the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the conti ...

more than localities in the lower

Lena Lena or LENA may refer to: Places * Léna Department, a department of Houet Province in Burkina Faso * Lena, Manitoba, an unincorporated community located in Killarney-Turtle Mountain municipality in Manitoba, Canada * Lena, Norway, a village in ...

basin, which gives it much heavier rainfall during the summer than most of the republic, as well as a little more snowfall and rather less extreme winter temperatures – though still extremely cold for the latitude and as much as colder than settlements actually on the Okhotsk coast. In spite of the less extreme winters vis-à-vis more northerly parts of Sakha, Aldan has never seen any day above freezing from 22 November to 7 March inclusive. Although winters are somewhat less extreme than

Yakutsk Yakutsk (russian: Якутск, p=jɪˈkutsk; sah, Дьокуускай, translit=Djokuuskay, ) is the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located about south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one ...

, summers are actually somewhat cooler, and cloudier, than those northerly areas. The coldest temperature recorded in Aldan since the weather station was opened in 1937 has been on 4 January 1951 and the hottest on 3 July 2021. February 1969, with a mean temperature of , has been the coldest month on record, shading the preceding January which averaged . The hottest month has been July 1941 which averaged , the wettest August 2006 with of rain, and the driest March 1937 with only of water equivalent.

References

Notes

Sources

*Official website of the Sakha Republic. ''Registry of the Administrative-Territorial Divisions of the Sakha Republic''
Aldansky District
. * *

External links

Official website of Aldan

Directory of organizations in Aldan

Official website of Aldan Youth Theater
{{Authority control Cities and towns in the Sakha Republic Cities and towns built in the Soviet Union Populated places established in 1923