Chumikan () is a rural locality (a '' selo'') and the

administrative center An administrative centre 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 the administrative language, such as Belgiu ...

of Tuguro-Chumikansky District of

Khabarovsk Krai Khabarovsk Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject (a krai) of Russia. It is located in the Russian Far East and is administratively part of the Far Eastern Federal District. The administrative centre of the krai is the types of ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, located at the mouth of the Uda River. Population:

Geography and climate

Chumikan lies on the southern side of the Uda River delta, at the westernmost extremity of

Uda Bay Uda Bay (; ''Udskaya Guba'') is a bay in Khabarovsk Krai, Russian Federation. Geography Uda Bay is located in the northwestern Sea of Okhotsk. It lies just west of the Shantar Islands. The Uda River flows into it. It is entered between Cape ...

in the

Sea of Okhotsk The Sea of Okhotsk; Historically also known as , or as ; ) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the sou ...

, which contains a number of small islands. The terrain surrounding the town is almost entirely mountainous except for the narrow river valley extending to the west. On the southern side rise the northern spurs of the Taikan Range, highest point .Topographic map N-53; M 1: 1,000,00
/ref> The climate of Chumikan is

subarctic The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of hemiboreal regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Fennoscandia, Northwestern Russia, Siberia, and the Cair ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (1951–2014), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author ...

''Dfc''), with mild, wet summers and very cold dry winters which are only marginally moderated by the sea due to prevailing offshore flow from Siberia, although there is sufficient moderation that permafrost is discontinuous rather than continuous as in most of Siberia. Owing to the village's location near the sea, summers are markedly cooler and wetter than those of the inland territories, with the result that a different type of forest from the inland

larch Larches are deciduous conifers in the genus ''Larix'', of the family Pinaceae (subfamily Laricoideae). Growing from tall, they are native to the cooler regions of the northern hemisphere, where they are found in lowland forests in the high la ...

forest, dominated by '' Picea obovata'', occurs. Chumikan is located at a similar latitude as

Kaliningrad Oblast Kaliningrad Oblast () is the westernmost federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of the Russian Federation. It is a Enclave and exclave, semi-exclave on the Baltic Sea within the Baltic region of Prussia (region), Prussia, surrounded by Pola ...

on the other side of the country, although being colder over the year as a whole due to the combined influence of the

Siberian High The Siberian High (also Siberian Anticyclone; (''Aziatsky antitsiklon''); zh, 西伯利亞高壓; Pinyin ''Xībólìyǎ gāoyā''; Kazakh Азия антициклоны (''Aziya antitsiklonı'')) is a massive collection of cold dry air that a ...

in winter and of the cold Sea of Okhotsk in summer.

History

It was founded in 1885 as a fishing port on the

, and up to these days has never been made accessible by

road A road is a thoroughfare used primarily for movement of traffic. Roads differ from streets, whose primary use is local access. They also differ from stroads, which combine the features of streets and roads. Most modern roads are paved. Th ...

, even though the area had been a winter port for the

Yakut Yakut or Yakutian may refer to: * Yakuts, the Turkic peoples indigenous to the Sakha Republic * Yakut language, a Turkic language * Yakut scripts, Scripts used to write the Yakut language * Yakut (name) * Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic ...

and Evenki people for many years before Russians discovered it. Chumikan soon became a trading center for

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

, which was discovered inland within a decade after founding. In the 1920s, after the gold was depleted, Chumikan became, along with other localities along the coast, a center of resistance to the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

. In the decades that followed, Chumikan's chief role was as a center for the extremely rich fisheries of the Sea of Okhotsk, but during the latter part of the Soviet era, there were efforts to develop major

phosphorite Phosphorite, phosphate rock or rock phosphate is a non-detrital sedimentary rock that contains high amounts of phosphate minerals. The phosphate content of phosphorite (or grade of phosphate rock) varies greatly, from 4% to 20% phosphorus pentoxi ...

reserves known to occur inland.See American Geographical Society of New York; Soviet Geography, Volume 23 (1982); p. 696 The

dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...

meant that these efforts have largely disintegrated.

References

{{Authority control Rural localities in Khabarovsk Krai Ports and harbours of the Russian Pacific Coast Populated places established in 1885 1885 establishments in the Russian Empire Road-inaccessible communities of Russia