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

Urals The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through European ...

. It led from Solikamsk to

Verkhoturye Verkhoturye (russian: Верхоту́рье) 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 Yekaterinb ...

and thence to

Tobolsk Tobolsk (russian: Тобо́льск) is a town in Tyumen Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Tobol and Irtysh rivers. Founded in 1590, Tobolsk is the second-oldest Russian settlement east of the Ural Mountains in Asian Russia, and i ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

. 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 or Tsardom of Rus' also externally referenced as the Tsardom of Muscovy, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of Tsar by Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter I i ...

in the 17th century. The route was apparently based on an existing trail used by Khanty and Mansi 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 large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

until the construction of the

Great Siberian Road The Siberian Route (russian: Сибирский тракт; ''Sibirsky trakt''), also known as the Moscow Highway (, Московский тракт) and Great Highway (, Большой тракт), was a historic route that connected European Rus ...

in 1735.

References

External links

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