Vilyuysk

It was founded in 1634 as a Cossack wintering (Tukan or Verkhnevilyui). The name Verkhnevilyuyskoe in location on the Vilyuy River is higher than the Nizhnevilyuy winter.

In 1775, during the division of the Irkutsk province into provinces and voivodeship, it was transformed into a commissariat, with counting to the Olekmsky prison of the Yakut province. The participants of the Pugachev uprising sent to this region for hard labor built a city called Olensk in 1783, which became the center of the vast Vilyui district of the Yakutsk region of the Irkutsk province. In 1821, Vilyuisk was renamed.

The population of Vilyuisk, consisting mainly of Russian Cossacks, burghers and Yakuts, was engaged mainly in petty trade. In 1869, there were 40 buildings in Vilyuisk, located on two parallel streets. On the only square in the city stood a two-storey wooden St. Nicholas Cathedral (1800). Once a year from Yakutsk came two or three ships (spider) with state and merchant cargo.