Chumikan

Chumikan is a small town at the mouth of the Uda River, Ayano-Maysky District, Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. Coordinates 54°42′N 135°17′E / 54.7°N 135.283°E / 54.7; 135.283^[1].

The town was founded in 1885 as a fishing port on the Sea of Okhotsk, and even today has never been made accessible by road^[2], but the area had been a winter port for Yakut and Evenki people for many years before Russians discovered it. Chumikan soon became a trading centre for gold, which was discovered inland within a decade of the town’s founding.^[3]. After the gold was depleted, the town became, along with others along the Khabarovsk Krai coast, a centre for resistance to the Bolshevik Revolution in the 1920s.

In the subsequent decades, Chumikan’s chief role was as a centre 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 phosphate rock reserves known to occur inland^[4]. The collapse of the Soviet Union has meant that these efforts have largely disintegrated.

Geography and climate

Chumikan lies on the southern side of the Uda delta, at the westernmost extremity of a small gulf in the Sea of Okhostsk, 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 the Dzhugdzhur Mountains rise to 2,090 metres (6,860 ft).

The climate of Chumikan is subarctic (Köppen Dwc), with mild, wet summers and very cold dry winters. Owing to its location near the sea, the summers are markedly cooler and wetter than those of inland Siberia, with the result that a different type of forest from the inland larch forest, dominated by Picea obovata, occurs.

1. ^ http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/russia/Chumikan.htm Chumikan airport
2. ^ See Welcome to Chumikan
3. ^ See Nature: international journal of science; volume 54 (1896); pp. 517-518
4. ^ See American Geographical Society of New York; Soviet Geography, Volume 23 (1982); p. 696