Another fine Europe-Asia boundary marker. Nice one.
This boundary is intriguing: it is a continent boundary, but there
are sections of it that don't coincide with any administrative
boundary. This is why even the Russians don't always know for sure
where that boundary is.
I found two Russian articles on the internet, which I have translated
for you. Do visit the second article yourself, though: it has nice
illustrations.
The first one:
The Sibirka a boundary stream
Yuriy Dunayev
Ten kilometres west of Nizhneye Selo, on the road to Staroutkinsk, we
cross a bridge over the little river that bears the name Sibirka. It
starts on the eastern slope of the Kirgishan heights and after 16
kilometres pours its waters into the Chusovaya from the left.
The well-known scholar of Siberian history P.A. Slovtsov considered
this little river the boundary of ancient Siberia. Before the Ural
was visited by Alexander Humboldt and Gustav Rose, however, in the
world of science the name Ural was given to a less significant
height, which is situated considerably more to the west between the
coach stations Kirgishanskaya and Grobovskaya, and which constitutes
the water divide between some tributaries of the Chusovaya and the
Ufa.
Peter the Greats ambassador to China, Izbrant Ides, considered, for
example, the right bank of the Chusovaya, where the Stroganov
settlements ended, at the place the Mezhevaya Utka flows into the
Chusovaya, as the beginning of Asia. Academician I.G. Gmelin, who is
known for his many years of travel through Siberia with S. Müller,
travelled from Kungur to Yekaterinburg almost exactly along the
present Moscow-Siberia trail, and considered the Ural mountain range
to be one of the ridges that runs parallel to the Ural, and to which
belongs Klenovaya mountain, at the foot of which at that time the
boundary post was situated.
Doctor A. Erman from Berlin, who travelled across the Ural in 1828
together with the Norwegian scientist professor Heistens and
lieutenant Douai, had his attention drawn by his coachmen to
Kirgishan mountain, who said that that's where the boundary between
Russia and Siberia is. That's why it is not surprising that P.A.
Slovtsov too considered the little river Sibirka to be the boundary
river. He wasn't mistaken, either.
A testimony of the fact that the boundary used to run along this
little river is the find by the pupils of Staroutkinsk school no. 13
of an ancient boundary stone on one of the banks of the Sibirka. This
stone divided, according to its inscription, Muscovy and the Sibirian
khanate. That is why the stream Sibirka, which flows into the
Chusovaya at a spot at 57°09' N. lat., is the most ancient boundary
of Russia and Siberia, and this is why it got its name, too.
By the way, A. Dmitriev in "Permskaya starina" mentions, that in 1681
the village Sibirka was situated on the banks of the river and
consisted of only one farm.
Source: http://uralstalker.ekaterinburg.com:8081/2000/07/0007-06.html
The second one (yes, Russians seem to call every boundary marker an
obelisk!):
Boundary guard in the Ural
V. Terentyev
More than three thousand kilometres the Ural mountains stretch from
north to south. This mountainous boundary in the centre of Russia is
firmly established and is maintained to this day. This is a big merit
of the great statesman and explorer of the Ural, Vasiliy Nikitich
Tatishchev. He is the first Russian that called these mountains Ural.
Tatishchev was also the man that came to the conclusion the Ural
mountains were on the border of two parts of the world: Europe and
Asia. This boundary, drawn by V.N. Tatishchev two and a half
centuries ago, in spite of its conditional nature, still holds its
historical meaning, is known the world over and is fixed by many
obelisks with the inscription "Europe-Asia".
The placing of these started in the Ural mountains already in the
last century and is still being continued. The boundary markers were
put up along the entire Ural range. They continue to attract
tourists, because every one of them is different and has its own
look. At present there are approximately twenty obelisks. A precise
figure cannot be given, because no one has ever counted them, and
news of them mostly comes from scholars of local history and tourists.
In the central Ural area, in the Sverdlovsk province and around
Nizhniy Tagil, there are many interesting and originally constructed
border obelisks. At the occasion of the visit to our region of the
successor to the throne, the future Russian emperor Alexander II in
1837, the first marker "Europe-Asia" was placed in the Ural
mountains a marble pyramid with the coat-of-arms of the czar. After
the October revolution it was destroyed, being a symbol of czarist
power. On this spot in 1926 a new obelisk was erected. It stands on
the Siberian trail some forty kilometres from Yekaterinburg, in the
Pervouralsk rayon.
Another monument from the last century, built in 1868 by order and at
the expense of the gold industrialists of the Northern Ural, can
still be seen today. It stands at the village Kedrovka on the road
from Kushva to Serebryanka. It is made of cast iron, and the form
resembles a bell tower. The central part is crowned by a red, raised
cupola, and on the corners are round columns, that are also crowned
by small cupolas. They used to be gilded, and on the back side the
czarist coat-of-arms shined. In the civil war the obelisk was
destroyed. But tourists of the Nizhnyaya Salda factory have recently
restored it.
The address of another boundary marker is probably known to many: the
mountain pass crossing the Vysokie Gory ridge near the village of
Uralets on the road Nizhniy Tagil-Visim. It is a square column with a
height of six metres. On top of it is a model of the earth globe,
around which along a steel orbit turn a satellite and the space
ship "Vostok".
From Nizhniy Tagil another marker can be reached: at the 25th
kilometre of the Serebryanskiy trail you are met by a stele, placed
there in honour of the 50th anniversary of October.
Interesting are the geographical location and the history of the
northernmost of all boundary markers "Europe-Asia". It stands at the
coast of the Yugorskiy Shar strait. Here the Ural range "dives" into
the waters of the Arctic Ocean. The marker was placed here in 1973 by
the members of an expedition on the ship "Zamora", sailing from
Archangel to Dickson. This is a modest and simple obelisk. They got a
rusty anchor somewhere, attached a chain to it, and to a metal pipe a
sign was attached, with the inscription "Europe-Asia" on it.
Further, along the whole Ural range, obelisks form a chain, going
from north to south right to the city of Orenburg.
Apart from the official "registered" obelisks there are in the Ural
mountains a whole range of do-it-yourself ones, put up by tourists,
school children, forest workers. For example, in the vicinity of
Tagil near the village of Yelizavetinskoye on the old winter trail
Tagil-Visim woodcutters have put up their sign: they planted a pine
pole of about four metres in the ground, and on a surface made flat
at the top they cut out the words "Europe-Asia". And in this way the
boundary signs are put up.
On the pictures: this is how the boundary markers look like in the
Central Ural mountains; the northernmost obelisk on the bank of the
Arctic Ocean.
Source: http://history.ntagil.ru/5_3_11.htm
Peter S.
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., granthutchison@c... wrote:
> > http://www.trailblazer-guides.com/books/transsib/index.html?http%
> 3A//www.trailblazer-guides.com/books/transsib/reading.html
>
> Ah, the only border monument mentioned in this group that I've
> actually visited. I hung out of the space between two carriages on
> the Trans-Siberian railway, camera at the ready, counting the km
> markers towards 1777. Then the thing shot past at 60mph, and I hit
> the shutter button more by reflex than anything else. The picture
> turned out perfectly composed, as if I'd stood beside the line and
> taken all the time in the world to line up and shoot!
> The railway side (the only side I saw) has "<-Europe" and "Asia->"
in
> Cyrillic, as I recall. I'll dig out the slide and project it to
make
> sure.
>
> Grant