Kamyshlov

Kamyshlov began as a fortified Russian settlement beside the Pyshma, where the Kamyshlovka entered the larger river. In 1668 Semyon Budakov reported the establishment of the Kamyshevskaya sloboda to the governor at Verkhoturye. Peasants and Cossacks from nearby settlements supplied its first households; a palisade enclosed houses and storehouses on the raised ground above the river. The name later changed to Kamyshlovskaya sloboda.

The Siberian road made the settlement a stopping place between the Urals and western Siberia. Routes towards Irbit and Shadrinsk met the main road here, bringing merchants, officials and other travellers through the town. Kamyshlov received town status in 1781 and became a district centre. Agriculture and roadside trade remained prominent: Alexander Radishchev described a town grown from a village, with a wooden church, a Sunday market and pine forest beyond it. Farmers and carriers supplied the food, horses and transport on which overland travel depended. By the early nineteenth century, this small town's importance rested on the junction of local rural production with traffic along one of the empire's principal inland routes.